Mr. Kamysh gives an impressionistic account of sneaking into and guiding daring travelers around the Exclusion Zone ... Mr. Kamysh’s tone is consistently hard-boiled ... On the inherent health risk that comes with habitually entering a nuclear wasteland, Mr. Kamysh is rather blasé. The voice of the 'Chornobyl underground in literature' approaches his calling with a smirking fatalism, and he worries more about eluding the authorities than radiation. These days, illegal tourists in the Exclusion Zone are the least of Ukrainians’ concerns.
The very premise of Ukrainian writer Markiyan Kamysh’s book [is] stark-staring remarkable ... Stalking the Atomic City,...details in catchy and often evocative language Kamysh’s many clandestine visits to the Exclusion Zone ... He manages to find comrades in this daftest of all adventures, and amidst the rivers of cheap alcohol, the parade of filthy sleeping bags, and the absolutely endless amount of smoking...there are surprisingly frequent moments of happy memories ... There’s a forensic reading that makes all this look like exactly the necrotic grandstanding it certainly was. Bookstores are full of titles extolling the virtues of camping out in the wild, and that makes such titles toxic for a certain rabid strand of anomie-drenched social media orphans, hence the evident need in Stalking the Atomic City to go further, to corrupt the source, to extoll the virtues of camping … in a nuclear wasteland. And if there’s a higher, non-forensic reading, some nonsense about finding salvation even at the extremities of tragedy, here’s hoping readers don’t take it seriously enough to think about booking a trip.
... haunting prose ... n bold strokes, Kamysh relates both the sublime and horrific moments when he and fellow stalkers take a walk in the Zone ... The exhilaration of the intrepid trespasser sings throughout this crass, funky ode to an addiction to living in the realm of desolation.
Evocative ... Though some of Kamysh’s stylistic mannerisms grate, he captures the zone’s strange mix of beauty and bleakness with precision. It’s a captivating study of 'the most exotic place on Earth.'
Raw ... Kamysh paints a picture—and includes his own photographs—of a stark, surreal landscape ... Translators Leliv and Costigan-Humes capture Kamysh’s angry, sometimes hauntingly rueful prose. A visceral, graphic report from dystopia.
