Visit Sunny Chernobyl

The lifeless moonscape of Canada's oil sand strip mines. A vast vortex of plastic floating endlessly around the Pacific. An eerie abandoned town square in a radioactive Ukrainian wilderness. These are the places the tourist boards would rather you didn't see. The places that don't show up in any guide books. And the places that, six years ago, journalist and film-maker Andrew Blackwell set out to explore. Visit Sunny Chernobyl is the wry, funny, sometimes poignant tale of his trip through the world's most degraded environments. "This book is based on a simple but brilliant idea: to hang out in the most polluted and toxic places on the planet. Well it's a brilliant idea for a book at any rate, if not a holiday" Mail on Sunday "[Andrew Blackwell] has seen the worst we can do to ourselves, met the best of us trying to repair the damage, and discovered - mystifyingly at times - beauty in the planetary dark side" -- Iain Finlayson The Times "This is one of the best concepts for a non-fiction book I have come across in some time ... There is a great deal of acute observation, proper thinking and challenging material in each of the journeys" -- Stuart Kelly Scotland on Sunday "An essential read. A very funny - and very disturbing - look at some parts of our world that need to be acknowledged. Visit Sunny Chernobyl is my new favorite guidebook to some places I admit to have visited" -- Peter Greenburg, Travel Editor, CBS News "A certain amount of depression and anger does result from reading Andrew Blackwell's Visit Sunny Chernobyl, but Blackwell is such a good and amusing travel writer, such an engaging companion around the awfulness, that you'll also come away somewhat entertained" -- Doug Johnstone The Big Issue