The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a powerful symbol of the more widespread collapse of communist regimes in Europe and the thawing of relations between East and West. Since then, countries which were once behind the so-called “Iron Curtain”, including the Baltic states, have become popular tourist destinations – apart from enthusiastic competitors in the Eurovision song contest. However, it sometimes seems as if their years under Soviet rule or influence have not yet been shrugged off, giving them a strange and exotic aura. Decades after its demise, the USSR and its satellite states still exert a morbid or (depending on one’s sympathies) nostalgic fascination. Perhaps, this explains, in part, the enthusiasm for HBO’s tv series Chernobyl.

If Eastern Europe still feels ‘different’ now, imagine how it was like in 1998. For Californian journalist Katya Cengel, then just a twenty-two-year old college graduate, it was, both literally and metaphorically, at the other end of the world. Far from disheartening her, this challenge drove her to seek a job with the Baltic Times in Latvia and then, once this first leg of her European adventure was finished, to move to the Ukraine.

From Chernobyl with Love contains the memoirs of these difficult but rewarding years. Admittedly, the choice of title seems suspiciously like an attempt to capitalise on the current interest in Chernobyl – the book has little to do with that nuclear plant or its notorious disaster, apart from the fact that one of Cengel’s assignments in Chernobyl led to her meeting her husband, whose step-father happened to be an engineer at the plant at the time of the explosion.

Yet, even if it’s Chernobyl which makes you pick up this book, you will likely hold on to it for other reasons. For Cengel is an engaging raconteur. The story she presents to us is, primarily, a personal one. She reveals much about her relationship with her family, about the friends she made in Latvia and the Ukraine, about falling in (and out of) love with the man who would become her husband. In her account, Cengel tends to downplay her professional prowess and successes – she’s actually a prize-winning, globe-trotting journalist. Her skill shows in the way she uses her (and others’) personal stories to comment on wider social, political and cultural issues. Thus, her own struggles with illness give her account a human dimension, but also serve as eye-openers about the dismal health services in the Ukraine. Her relationship (and subsequent rift) with her ex-husband, also serve to highlight the difficulty of bridging the almost irreconcilable differences between distant cultures. Small details reveal the hardships faced in post-Communist countries – from the constant struggle with the cold in less-then-comfortable residences to the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Government offices (importing orthodontic retainers involved getting a personal authorisation from the Health Minister) and the quasi-farcical political posturing (as revealed in Cengel’s chapter about her assignment in the separatist state of Transdienstria). Several chapters recount the build-up to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, as witnessed at first hand by the author.

From Chernobyl with Love is no history book. It’s something even more authentic – a personal account of some of the most tumultuous events in of the recent past. ( )

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a powerful symbol of the more widespread collapse of communist regimes in Europe and the thawing of relations between East and West. Since then, countries which were once behind the so-called “Iron Curtain”, including the Baltic states, have become popular tourist destinations – apart from enthusiastic competitors in the Eurovision song contest. However, it sometimes seems as if their years under Soviet rule or influence have not yet been shrugged off, giving them a strange and exotic aura. Decades after its demise, the USSR and its satellite states still exert a morbid or (depending on one’s sympathies) nostalgic fascination. Perhaps, this explains, in part, the enthusiasm for HBO’s tv series Chernobyl.

If Eastern Europe still feels ‘different’ now, imagine how it was like in 1998. For Californian journalist Katya Cengel, then just a twenty-two-year old college graduate, it was, both literally and metaphorically, at the other end of the world. Far from disheartening her, this challenge drove her to seek a job with the Baltic Times in Latvia and then, once this first leg of her European adventure was finished, to move to the Ukraine.

From Chernobyl with Love contains the memoirs of these difficult but rewarding years. Admittedly, the choice of title seems suspiciously like an attempt to capitalise on the current interest in Chernobyl – the book has little to do with that nuclear plant or its notorious disaster, apart from the fact that one of Cengel’s assignments in Chernobyl led to her meeting with her husband, whose step-father happened to be an engineer at the plant at the time of the explosion.

Yet, even if it’s Chernobyl which makes you pick up this book, you will likely hold on to it for other reasons. For Cengel is an engaging raconteur. The story she presents to us is, primarily, a personal one. She reveals much about her relationship with her family, about the friends she made in Latvia and the Ukraine, about falling in (and out of) love with the man who would become her husband. In her account, Cengel tends to downplay her professional prowess and successes – she’s actually a prize-winning, globe-trotting journalist. Her skill shows in the way she uses her (and others’) personal stories to comment on wider social, political and cultural issues. Thus, her own struggles with illness give her account a human dimension, but also serve as eye-openers about the dismal health services in the Ukraine. Her relationship (and subsequent rift) with her ex-husband, also serve to highlight the difficulty of bridging the almost irreconcilable differences between distant cultures. Small details reveal the hardships faced in post-Communist countries – from the constant struggle with the cold in less-then-comfortable residences to the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Government offices (importing orthodontic retainers involved getting a personal authorisation from the Health Minister) and the quasi-farcical political posturing (as revealed in Cengel’s chapter about her assignment in the separatist state of Transdienstria). Several chapters recount the build-up to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, as witnessed at first hand by the author.

From Chernobyl with Love is no history book. It’s something even more authentic – a personal account of some of the most tumultuous events in of the recent past. ( )