Aftertime

the long version

Aftertime is the story of a young woman's struggle to come to grips with the aftermath of a devastating catastrophe. In her last year at the university in Kiev and shortly before she is to take her final examinations, the narrator is persuaded by her roommate to go for a cruise on a large lake north of the city. While her friends dance in the ballroom below ship, the young woman stands on deck, enjoying the tranquil evening. Sixty miles away, a nuclear reactor explodes. In the days that follow, the official version of events minimizes the risks. Reports of the death toll are revised from two thousand to a mere twenty, then back again. Returning to Berlin, the young woman recognizes with mounting horror the symptoms that belie the Soviet government's disavowals, and she immerses herself in denial; she becomes obsessed with having a healthy baby, the only proof to herself and to the world that she has been untouched by the disaster. Getting no adequate guidance or explanation from her doctors, the woman makes a final, desperate bid to seize control of her destiny.