In Cher­nobyl, Life, and Oth­er Dis­as­ters, Yev­ge­nia Nay­berg uses reflec­tion, humor, and artis­tic inno­va­tion in cre­at­ing a por­trait of her­self as a young woman. Liv­ing in 1980s Ukraine, young Genya (Yev­ge­nia) aspires to be an artist, but con­fronts the restric­tive real­i­ty of life in the Cold War era Sovi­et Union. When the dis­as­trous nuclear acci­dent at Cher­nobyl occurs in 1986, the after­math rocks her already less-than-per­fect fam­i­ly life. In this stun­ning work of graph­ic art and lit­er­a­ture, Genya’s hon­esty and opti­mism coex­ist with her fears.

Focused on apply­ing to Kyiv’s elite Nation­al Sec­ondary School of Art, Genya is the con­stant recip­i­ent of frus­trat­ing infor­ma­tion from adults. The school’s enroll­ment of Jews can­not be more than 1% of its stu­dent body, adding an addi­tion­al bur­den to the nor­mal pres­sure of com­pe­ti­tion. Nay­berg cap­tures an epiphany of this truth with her char­ac­ter­is­tic pre­ci­sion. ​“Mom, am I a Yid?” she asks. A cul­ture of cru­el but reflex­ive anti­semitism is con­tained in that phrase. Genya’s stereo­typ­i­cal­ly boy­ish appear­ance and left-hand­ed­ness fur­ther con­tribute to her marginalization.

The book opens with a sense of antic­i­pa­tion, as Genya looks for­ward to the expect­ed appear­ance of Halley’s Comet, a phe­nom­e­non she cal­cu­lates that she will see twice dur­ing her life. Even as her sto­ry focus­es on the per­son­al, Nay­berg describes the con­nec­tions of her younger self to the out­side world. When devis­ing metaphors for the human con­di­tion, Nay­berg makes them believ­able on an indi­vid­ual lev­el. Genya describes her hair as ​“the col­or of a smoked her­ring.” When expo­sure to radi­a­tion forces her to cut off the long gen­der-affirm­ing braid it has tak­en years to grow, she views its sad trans­for­ma­tion into a ​“dead her­ring.” Lat­er, she will find the braid in a draw­er, but she no longer needs it, hav­ing reject­ed beau­ty stan­dards that have come to seem ridiculous.

The hypocrisy of adults defines Genya’s appli­ca­tion to art school. As her moth­er, a pro­fes­sion­al artist, explains, she will need to pro­duce a per­fect work of social­ist real­ism in order to gain entry, and earn the free­dom of artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion. For­tu­nate­ly, she has a sup­port­ive group of book­ish and quirky friends who share her dis­dain for this process. Any glimpse of escape is wel­come, includ­ing read­ing One Hun­dred Years of Soli­tude: ​“I read it in one sit­ting. I have no

idea what it is about, but I love it!” One pic­ture con­tains images of art imple­ments on a back­ground of graph paper, each one labeled with pre­ci­sion as she pre­pares to prove her­self on the exam. Oth­er more expan­sive scenes con­trast the beau­ty of Kyiv with the sti­fling envi­ron­ment of Vol­gograd, where her fam­i­ly finds refuge with rel­a­tives after the nuclear acci­dent. Both scenes fea­ture an emer­ald green fore­ground, but in the sec­ond, the archi­tec­tur­al splen­dors of Kyiv have been replaced by Volgograd’s bru­tal­ist monuments.

Nar­ra­tive ten­sion builds as Genya awaits the results of her appli­ca­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in a strik­ing word­less pic­ture of the adult Yev­ge­nia Nay­berg at work in her stu­dio. Copies of her books occu­py one end of a long table, with paint, paper, brush­es, and a cup of cof­fee placed around her. View­ing her from the back, read­ers see her draw­ing with her left hand.