Published books

Chernobyl

Author’s Note Some days don’t begin like any other—and from that moment on, nothing continues the way it used to. Chernobyl. is a story about such a day. But more than that, it is a story about a time, a feeling, and a young man—me—trying to find his place in a world that was quietly falling apart. In the spring of 1986, I was living in Moscow as a university student. I was full of questions, ambitions, and that strange sense that something was coming. We didn’t know what had happened—just heard whispers. And even those were hushed. Then one day, my roommate brought in a Western magazine with a satellite photo on the cover: the exploded reactor. Until then we had only guessed. From that moment on, we knew. This story was born from memory. It is not the official version of history—but my own. A chapter from a life lived in the shadow of silence, in a world where truth traveled slowly and often arrived too late. Chernobyl. is the third piece in a seven-part short story cycle I’ve been writing. Each story stands on its own, yet together they trace something deeper: the map of a life shaped by the quiet storms of Central and Eastern Europe’s recent past. For those who choose to follow me through these stories, I offer not just historical events—but the way they echo within one human life. My life. Alex Buday

National Mourning

In National Mourning, I return to a world where history no longer feels distant, but deeply personal. This novella is part of my larger series inspired by real memories from Eastern Europe during the final years of the socialist era — a time when entire systems were beginning to crack, yet ordinary people were still trying to understand what the future might demand from them. Unlike revolutions that arrive with celebration and noise, some historical moments come wrapped in silence, uncertainty, and quiet grief. National Mourning explores precisely this fragile atmosphere: the feeling that an old world is dying before a new one has fully learned how to breathe. As a young man growing up behind the Iron Curtain, I witnessed how politics entered everyday life — through fear, loyalty, confusion, and the strange intimacy of collective uncertainty. This novella is not only about the collapse of a political system, but about the emotional weight carried by those who lived through it. National Mourning belongs to the same literary journey as Chernobyl, The Wall, The Border, and Velvet — stories connected not only by history, but by memory. Because sometimes the end of an era is not announced by triumph. Sometimes it arrives quietly, like a country lowering its voice.