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
Alhierd Bacharevič was born in Minsk in 1975. His books have been translated into German, French, Polish and Russian. In 2021, he was awarded the Erwin Piscator Prize and nominated for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. An adaptation of Bacharević’s novel Dogs of Europe—which has been banned in Belarus—premiered at the Barbican, London, in 2022. Bacharević and his wife, poet Julia Cimafiejeva, recently fled Belarus and are living in Graz, Austria.
Translated from the Belarusian by Petra Reid Jim Dingley
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
Largely a meditation on what makes a language worth holding onto… Alindarka’s Children shifts lyrically between two languages, Belarusian and Russian, translated respectively and brilliantly into Scots and English. Readers will be stirred by Bacharevič’s ardent, earnest devotion.—Publishers Weekly
Bacharevič’s novel blends the magic and darkness of a fairy tale with what is implicitly a manifesto on language and national identity.—Kirkus Reviews
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.—The Scotsman
