Structure

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, is a nonfiction book by British journalist Adam Higginbotham. It discusses the lead up to and fall out from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1980s. It is written in a narrative style in the past tense, mainly through anecdote and character study, with a significant number of historical references. At many points, Higginbotham writes like he is putting together a human interest story, at other points, a political analysis. Higginbotham sites all of his sources and some additional notes at the end of the book, but does not use footnotes throughout the main text.

Midnight in Chernobyl contains twenty chapters. They are preceded by notes on translations, maps, a list of important characters, and a prologue. They are followed by an epilogue, acknowledgements, an author’s note, a glossary...