When Chernobyl disaster happened I was a first-year university student on my summer holidays at a location in Europe through which the winds blew the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl. I wasn’t close enough to be seriously affected, but close enough to scare myself witless and for my mother to have a near heart attack.

It did feel like the end of the world and it stayed with me for years.

Chernobyl plays an important part in Alyosha’s story in The End of the Road. I was delighted today to find a review of the book on Amazon raising the very issue of my use of Chernobyl Disaster as an allegory of Armageddon.

“I thought this one of the best near apocalypse books I have read in years. There are various people’s voices telling this story and various situations as a Third World War and following meteorite storms or nerve gas attacks come near to destroying humanity. But there will be survivors and this is a survivors’ story. In particular I enjoyed the descriptions of the nunnery in Liege and what happened there. I loved Bella and Reggie and fascinating to use Chernobyl as the focus of one journey. It’s an absolutely wonderful novel, really beautifully told, as good as if not better than the classic Station Eleven. The structuring in this book is excellent. The characters pull at our heart strings and are incredibly vivid, their stories moving. Such a brilliantly clever novel. I can see how it can continue into a second book and I absolutely hope it does. Highly recommended.” Carol McGrath, author of The Silken Rose.

Review link on Amazon