Abstract

The article analyses the reportage of John Hersey, Svetlana Alexievich and Katarzyna Boni devoted to the victims of the atomic bomb explosion in Hiroshima, as well as the nuclear reactor accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima. Presenting the consequences of disasters, not only in material, but above all in human terms, the author makes an attempt to find out how societies, including the heroes of reportage, process the trauma of contamination through culture, and what is the role in this process of the fictionalized type of this genre of the non-fiction prose. To answer the question whether the contemporary reportage can serve as a culture-creating factor, the author analyses the linguistic and stylistic features, which carry cultural meanings, as well as the composition of reportage texts revealing the way the authors build the world presented of their authentic stories.