Description
Book SynopsisThe masterful English debut of Alhierd Bacharevic, a new voice from Belarus
Alicia and her brother Avi are imprisoned in a camp on the edge of a forest where children are trained to forget their language through therapy, coercion, drugs, and larynx surgery. The Leid (or Belarusian language) is considered a sickness to be cured and replaced by the only pure form of language, the Lingo (Russian). A contemporary Hansel and Gretel adventure, the children escape into the forest and end up in even greater danger... A feat of translation, Bacharevic’s story is brilliantly rendered into English and Scots from Russian and Belarusian.
Trade Review"Bacharevic’s rich, provocative novel offers a kaleidoscopic picture of language as fairy-tale forest, as Gulag, as monument, as tomb, as everlasting life."—The New York Times
'What we get is a book that is both a translation and a collage—an independent, multilingual literary work. It is an ingenious response to the novel’s polyphony and a tribute to the Scottish language that echoes the tribute Bacharevič pays to the Belarusian tongue.'—New York Review of Books
"Readers will be stirred by Bacharevič’s ardent, earnest devotion."—Publishers Weekly
‘You can take this book on many levels, from the philosophical and psychological analysis of what it does to a nation and a people to remove, control and suppress its mother tongue, to an exciting tale of two runaway children in a forest trying to survive on blueberries and avoid the threatening adults along their way.’—The Scotsman
'Kafkaesque and with elements of cyberpunk. Alhierd Bacharevic is the foremost figure of today’s Belarusian literature.'—New Eastern European
'Bacharevic hits you in the eye with the truth, and it hurts.'—Maria Martysevich
