Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl

The 1,000-square-mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is, for many, a symbol of total disaster: a reminder of shattered ideals and lost lives, now a toxic, dangerous no-man’s-land. For Markiyan Kamysh, it became a site of pilgrimage. He and dozens like him call themselves ‘stalkers’: wild adventurers who sneak past border patrols to spend days getting lost in this apocalyptic environment of dense swampland and desolate villages.

Kamysh, the son of a Chornobyl disaster liquidator, takes us with him into this alien world. In electric prose that captures the spectral beauty of the Zone and the reckless spirit of the stalkers, Kamysh tells of hallucinatory journeys alone amid the rusted ruins, of frantic brushes with police and moments of ecstatic oblivion in the wasteland. Written with gonzo energy and brash lyricism, Stalking the Atomic City is a vital, singular document of this dystopian reality.

An existential travel guide and an experiment in gonzo psychogeography, it stirs obvious comparisons with Hunter S Thompson… mesmerising ― The Telegraph

A voice that must be heard — Patti Smith (via Instagram)

Kamysh’s throbbing, fragmentary prose offers heart-stopping insight into what drives those who choose to trespass in dangerous places: reckless abandon in abandoned places — Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

Kamysh has made us understand why he thinks the zone around Chornobyl is so special, why – because of its desolate serenity, and the freedom it grants from the strictures of normal life – it may even be worth dying for. No mean feat… Remarkable ― Guardian