Markiyan Kamysh is a Ukrainian novelist. For seven years, he has been illegally investigating and writing about the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and the abandoned town of Prypiat. He has made dozens of expeditions behind the barbed wire and illegally lived in the Zone. His debut novel, A Stroll into the Zone (2015), the confessions of an illegal Chornobyl tourist and stalker, has been translated in French to critical acclaim. Le Nouvel Observateur called it ‘stunning’, while Monaco Hebdo included it in its best-of-the-month list. His second novel, Scrap (2017), narrates the lives of people from half-abandoned villages nearby Chornobyl where life continues to linger.

VISIT MARKIAN.INFO/

TRANSLATION

Duckweed

By MARKIYAN KAMYSH

Translated from the Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv