Book excerpt: In 'The Burning Edge' the writer Arthur Chichester takes the reader on a journey to the furthest edge of Belarus, Europe's least known country where he makes his way through towns and villages seemingly known only to those that continue to reside in them. On his journey through the irradiated borderlands he meets an assortment of characters struggling to make sense of a life in the shadows of the Chernobyl tragedy. At the end of his time in the region he decides to take one last journey off the map and walk alone through the irradiated forest on an adventure that will lead him through landscapes untouched and unseen since 1986. This is the first travel book to bring the region to a Western readership.