We can't escape the effects of the forces we set in motion.

In her last year at the university in Kiev and shortly before she is to take her final examinations, the narrator of this novel is persuaded by her roommate to go for a cruise on a large lake north of the city. While her friends dance in the ballroom below ship, the young woman stands on deck, enjoying the tranquil evening. Sixty miles away a nuclear reactor explodes.

Who is going to defend himself against something that approaches invisibly? Soundlessly? That can neither be smelled nor felt?

In the days that follow, the official version of events minimizes the risks. Conflicting instructions are issued; people are warned to stay indoors, yet reassured that there is no danger. Reports of the death toll are revised from two thousand to a mere twenty, then back again. Rumors proliferate; there is panic. Denial and deception characterize the public pronouncements.

Returning to Berlin, the young woman recognizes with mounting horror the symptoms that belie the Soviet government's disavowals, and she immerses herself in denial; she becomes obsessed with having a healthy baby, the only proof to herself and to the world that she has been untouched by the disaster. She suffers a miscarriage, embarks on a path of startling promiscuity, and suffers a second. Getting no adequate guidance or explanation from her doctors, the woman makes a final, desperate bid to seize control of her destiny by taking her own life.

It was not a snap decision. No. It had matured over a long period of time. But once I hadmade up my mind, it was natural, clear, and unavoidable as nothing in my life had ever been. The decision gave me back my freedom.

Aftertime is the moving story of one woman's coming to grips with her small place in history, and with that history's enormous impact on her life