Hello I am in charge of foreign rights at Le Cherche midi éditeur and Belfond. Le Cherche midi is a mainstream publisher presenting literature, women's fiction, thrillers, self help, documents... with always accurate topics. Belfond is a historical fiction publisher which has two series: Literary fiction (Belfond Pointillés) and Commercial Fiction (novels and thrillers). I would be pleased to introduce our Fall rights list with you. :)
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The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine’s complex relations with Russia and the West, the burden of tragedies such as the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and Ukraine’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Juxtaposing Ukraine’s history to the contemporary politics of memory, this volume provides a multidimensional image of a country that continues to make headlines around the world. Eloquent in style and comprehensive in approach, the essays collected here reveal the roots of the ongoing political, cultural, and military conflict in Ukraine, the largest country in Europe.
A nuclear accident can involve an explosion, destroying equipment or an entire building and spreading radioactive material over a wide area. When readers think of an explosion, they imagine a large, orange fireball and a great deal of yellow flame. In reality, that is not an accurate depiction of an explosion anywhere except in an oil refinery. Movie directors tend to enhance the drama of an explosion by including a few barrels of gasoline, so that there is a lot of color and a big ball of fire. The results of a nuclear explosion are equally as devastating, but there is no fireball. Written in easy-to-understand language, Nuclear Accidents and Disasters, Revised Edition is an examination of the learning process that has occurred over the last half century regarding the nuclear power industry. This updated, full-color resource features information on the massive reactor explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine, Jimmy Carter's experience with a reactor meltdown in Canada, and the ghost village of Pripiyat, Russia. It also examines the various lessons learned from a half century of mishaps and how the nuclear power industry has changed operating procedures and equipment designs due to detailed accident analysis.
I was a young journalist in the UK when the nuclear accidentat Chernobyl happened. At first it seemed like another of themany terrible things that happen in far-off countries andmake only brief headlines in our media before quickly disappearingfrom the front pages. Soon, though, a radioactivecloud began spreading across Europe and, perhaps for thefirst time, we were all forced to realise what a small, fragileworld we live in.Three decades on, Rosa Maria Pascual’s splendid noveltells the stories that weren’t heard at the time: what happened– and is still happening – to the people living aroundthe nuclear power station in what was then the Soviet Unionand is now Ukraine. From the first page it is a compellingread: a multi-stranded road movie of a book interweavingfirst-hand accounts of the explosion itself and its horrificconsequences; the journey of a woman from far-away Cataloniato discover the truth of the disaster as she helps childrenaffected by its consequences; and the odyssey of oneof those Chernobyl children who goes on the run with heryoung daughter to escape an unpleasant fate in her owncountry.There’s a lot more too. This is a book about nationalismand politics, about human nature, about little-known culturesand, most of all, about women and their defiant love forparents, children, husbands and lovers, set against a backgroundof disaster and tragedy. Because even in the darkestsituations, love offers a glimmer of hope for us all.Simon BerrillTranslator of the English edition “Someone once said that what makes a literarywork is what we might call “excellent use oflanguage”. Well, the novel “Where are you going,Iryna?” is undoubtedly a perfect example of this,packed with rare quality and sensitivity. Combininggreat narrative style and extreme delicacy,the author shows us the grim reality for thepeople of Ukraine of the tragedy that happenedat Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 during and afterthe accident at the nuclear power station.The story focuses on the character of Iryna,the people around her, and the experiences sheand her brother Vasyl have in Catalonia with ahost family when they are children. Flashingbackwards and forwards in time without everlosing clarity, the novel places us at differentperiods in Iryna’s exciting life as, despite theserious difficulties she often faces, she managesto maintain her enthusiasm and desire to get on.Iryna’s story is inspiring but also reminds us ofjust how far human beings can go wrong when wefail to calibrate certain technological applicationscorrectly. The Chernobyl disaster should certainlynot be forgotten considering that the price wenormally pay when we lose our collectivememory is repeating the same mistakes.All this makes Rosa Maria Pascual’s novel anexcellent, must-read book for remembering whatit means to contaminate land for centuries– something that should never, ever happen again. Ana Galisteo (English & Drama teacher)and Juan Méndez (Philosopher)
For the first time in print a photographer ventures behind the Iron Curtain to sensitively and beautifully document abandonment, lost in time after the collapse of the Soviet Union. From East Germany through Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Mother Russia to the despair of crumbling Chernobyl.
Growing public concern about releases of radiation into the environment has focused attention on the measurement of exposure of people living near nuclear weapons production facilities or in areas affected by accidental releases of radiation. Radiation-Dose Reconstruction for Epidemiologic Uses responds to the need for criteria for dose reconstruction studies, particularly if the doses are to be useful in epidemiology. This book provides specific and practical recommendations for whether, when, and how studies should be conducted, with an emphasis on public participation. Based on the expertise of scientists involved in dozens of dose reconstruction projects, this volume Provides an overview of the basic requirements and technical aspects of dose reconstruction. Presents lessons to be learned from dose reconstructions after Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and elsewhere. Explores the potential benefits and limitations of biological markers. Discusses how to establish the "source term"--that is, to determine what was released. Explores methods for identifying the environmental pathways by which radiation reaches the body. Offers details on three major categories of dose assessment.
In April 1991 BusinessWeek ran a cover story entitled, “I Can't Work This ?#!!@ Thing,†about the difficulties many people have with consumer products, such as cell phones and VCRs. More than 15 years later, the situation is much the sameâ€"-but at a very different level of scale. The disconnect between people and technology has had society-wide consequences in the large-scale system accidents from major human error, such as those at Three Mile Island and in Chernobyl. To prevent both the individually annoying and nationally significant consequences, human capabilities and needs must be considered early and throughout system design and development. One challenge for such consideration has been providing the background and data needed for the seamless integration of humans into the design process from various perspectives: human factors engineering, manpower, personnel, training, safety and health, and, in the military, habitability and survivability. This collection of development activities has come to be called human-system integration (HSI). Human-System Integration in the System Development Process reviews in detail more than 20 categories of HSI methods to provide invaluable guidance and information for system designers and developers.
The revelation debut of 2020. This is a novel about the unexpected places where one can find refuge. This is the story of a man and a girl whose paths cross when life turns its back on them. Alexei is forty years old and the headmaster of a school in a Ukrainian city. His wife has just left him, and his days follow the same unchanging pattern: at night he drinks until he passes out, and during the day he fights to hide his pain and misery at the school. From the window of his office he observes the students at playtime and starts to pay attention to a girl who is always alone. He soon learns that her father beats her, and she asks him for help and together they decide to stage their disappearance: Irina will spend the two years until she comes of age at Alexei’s house. They spend the time playing long games of chess and listening to the radio which becomes the girl’s only link with an outside world that is witnessing the collapse of Communism. Those four walls that contain all the cold and all the chaos of a lost man will be the witness of this unexpected thaw while Alexei and Irina face the multiple facets of their relationship: the girl’s fear that her mother is suffering, the awkwardness he feels before an adolescent girl who will soon be a woman, the paternal instinct that has emerged unexpectedly, the incipient rebelliousness of a sweet and clever young girl or Alexei’s affectionate attempts to give the girl space for intimacy and self-discovery. Life goes on outside the confines of Irina’s world, outside that impossible bubble, and nobody can guess what is hidden behind that cold window of that grey block of flats on that frozen street of a town that the world could barely place on a map. Nobody is aware either that the existence of the two is contained within a limbo that distances the misfortune of their arrival in that space that separates a question from its answer. When a nuclear accident that will go down in history forces them to evacuate the city, they will have to finally face up to the question that has pursued them for almost two years: Do they want to return to the real world? This is the story of a meltdown, a mutual fascination, about the unthinkable places where we find refuge; it is about two hurt animals who invent a world where it is possible to believe that everything will be better some day.
The Science of Responding to a Nuclear Reactor Accident summarizes the presentations and discussions of the May 2014 Gilbert W. Beebe Symposium titled "The Science and Response to a Nuclear Reactor Accident". The symposium, dedicated in honor of the distinguished National Cancer Institute radiation epidemiologist who died in 2003, was co-hosted by the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Cancer Institute. The symposium topic was prompted by the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was initiated by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami off the northeast coast of Japan. This was the fourth major nuclear accident that has occurred since the beginning of the nuclear age some 60 years ago. The 1957 Windscale accident in the United Kingdom caused by a fire in the reactor, the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States caused by mechanical and human errors, and the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union caused by a series of human errors during the conduct of a reactor experiment are the other three major accidents. The rarity of nuclear accidents and the limited amount of existing experiences that have been assembled over the decades heightens the importance of learning from the past. This year's symposium promoted discussions among federal, state, academic, research institute, and news media representatives on current scientific knowledge and response plans for nuclear reactor accidents. The Beebe symposium explored how experiences from past nuclear plant accidents can be used to mitigate the consequences of future accidents, if they occur. The Science of Responding to a Nuclear Reactor Accident addresses off-site emergency response and long-term management of the accident consequences; estimating radiation exposures of affected populations; health effects and population monitoring; other radiological consequences; and communication among plant officials, government officials, and the public and the role of the media.
Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the 2015 Annual Latvian Literature Award. The novel deals with the post-war period and follows the destinies of three generations of women, with the narrative focused mostly on the 1970s and 1980s. The mother, whose own mother has raised her without her real father, is a talented gynecologist who cannot accept the narrow space allotted to the individual by communist ideology. During her residency in Leningrad, she successfully – and in secret – performs an artificial insemination procedure on a young Russian woman, but the woman loses the child in a confrontation with the woman’s brutal husband, who is a war veteran. The path to science is now blocked for the talented doctor and she is reassigned to workin a small country village. She takes along her daughter, who is now deprived of the loving care of her grandparents.
