The star Chernobyl

Two sisters, one a dissident living abroad and the other a teacher in a remote Siberian village and a firm believer in the Communist Party, are arguing which one of them could give a better education to their youngest, 17-year old sister, when the latter announces that she is getting married to an engineer working at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. A year or so later, after the notorious accident, the news has great difficulty penetrating the official walls of silence, still firmly in place despite the proclaimed glasnost policy. The authorities pretend that nothing happened and fail to issue any public warning about the effects of radiation, knowingly sacrificing many lives which could have been saved. The teacher from Siberia, alarmed by a strange long-distance call which was suddenly cut off after her sister mentioned Chernobyl, sets off to Moscow to attend a regular party congress, convinced that her party comrades in higher positions would readily give her whatever information they have. She is in for a surprise and a disillusionment which turn her life around. In her quest for her youngest sister's family and the truth about the accident, she sees facets of Soviet life she had previously dismissed as malevolent imperialist propaganda and gets to know and depend on people she had thought of as traitors and spies. A heart-rending, brilliant novel of "The Women's Decameron".