Details

ISBN-10: 0811231968
ISBN-13: 9780811231961
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date: 06/21/2022
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.20" W, 1.00" H

Alindarka’s Children: Things Will Be Bad

Translator: Jim Dingley
Translator: Petra Reid

Paperback

Price: $19.95

Overview

It’s not Avi’s fault, it’s those sourish, mind-bending little berries that are to blame, those tiny wee spheres. Bilberries, bletherberries that befuddle the mind, babbleberries that give you a kick. The beautiful green forest scales, the timber songs, play out like a kaleidoscope before his eyes. It’s hard tae breathe, yer haunds skedaddle awa…

In a camp at the edge of a forest children are trained to forget their language through drugs, therapy, and coercion. Alicia and her brother Avi are rescued by their father, but they give him the slip and set out on their own. In the forest they encounter a cast of villains: the hovel-dwelling Granmaw, the language-traitor McFinnie, the border guard and murderer Bannock the Bogill, and a wolf.

A manifesto for the survival of the Belarusian language and soul, Alindarka’s Children is also a feat of translation. Winner of the English Pen Award, the novel has been brilliantly rendered into English (from the Russian) and Scots (from the Belarusian): both Belarusian and Scots are on the UNESCO Atlas of Endangered Languages.

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Reviews
A dark fantasy by one of Belarus's most original contemporary writers. It captures the depths of frustration, grief, and resolve building up for decades under the deceptively placid surface of Belarusian life. Both a translation and a collage–an independent, multilingual literary work.–Jaroslaw Anders "The New York Review of Books"
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Details

ISBN-10: 0811231968
ISBN-13: 9780811231961
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date: 06/21/2022
Dimensions: 7.90" L, 5.20" W, 1.00" H
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