Galia Ackerman


Galina Ackerman or usually Galia Ackerman is a French-Russian writer, historian, journalist, translator, researcher at the University of Caen, specializing on Ukraine and Post-Soviet states. She was also a translator for slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Biography

Galia Ackerman was born in 1948 in a Russian Jewish family. She is the holder of a doctorate in the history at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and associate researcher at the University of Caen.

Crossing Chernobyl

Galia Ackerman was once offered to translate in French a documentary 'Chernobyl Prayer' by Svetlana Alexievich, story about catastrophe of Soviet nuclear plant Chernobyl, and she did this in 1998. While working on the translation, she traveled in the poisoned territories, that had called 'Zone', in Belarus, and interviewed local well-known personalities about the nuclear catastrophe.
When she published her gathered stories about 'Zone', the Center of Modern Art of Barcelona asked her in 2003 prepare an exhibition about 'Zone'. To prepare the materials for the Center of Modern Art, Galia Ackerman traveled form 2003 to 2006 in Ukraine. She co-worked with a museum about the catastrophe in Kyiv, met with local people, and gathered various artefacts like special clothes of recovery workers, various Geiger counters. As result, she talked with many local people, gathered lots of information, and written her first documentary in 2006 about 'Zone', but, as she said, it was just a pure history of the catastrophe.
Since then, Galia Ackerman used to travel in Ukraine, visited 'Zone', met local people and became a friend with Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko, who was also often visited Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. So she decided to write the new story 'Crossing Chernobyl', her 20 years long experience about Chernobyl, thoughts, mental pictures of Chernobyl. The book was published in France.

Selected bibliography

Books