Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution
Categories: Politics & Social Sciences
Marilynne Robinson's first book of nonfiction, published in 1989, begins with Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing plant on the Cumbrian coast of northwest England, and the radioactive waste it discharged into the Irish Sea. From there she turns to the history of the British welfare state and its treatment of the poor, arguing that official secrecy and public complacency allowed the contamination to continue largely unchallenged.
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- Barack Obama: “I struck up a friendship with [the novelist] Marilynne Robinson, who has become a good friend. And we've become sort of pen pals. I started reading her in Iowa, where "Gilead" and some of her best novels are set. And I loved her writing in part because I saw those people every day.”