Elena is a student in Minsk. She is having an intense but self-destructive love affair with Viktor. When Elena's father goes to prison she has to take charge of his business dealings to help him. She drives repeatedly into the restricted zone at Chernobyl, behind the wheel of a truck, in order to smuggle contaminated steel. The conflicts with Viktor escalate, and Elena is increasingly captivated by the zone's deceptive beauty...
Interlocking narratives, told out of chronological order, about partisans in the Second World War who are a band of nihilistic marauders, roaming the countryside and dispensing what they see as justice to those they consider collaborators with the enemy.
