On May 7, a presentation of a collection of works by Belarusian political prisoners from 2020-2023, collected under one cover, is scheduled at the Belarusian Hub ‘Novaya Ziamlya” in Bialystok.
The book includes poems, fairy tales, memoirs, short stories and journalistic texts in Belarusian and Russian by 52 prisoners in politically motivated criminal cases of the last post-election years. Most of the works are taken from open sources, but not all were included in the publication.
The preface to the collection was written by the writer Eva Vezhnavets: “The work of Belarusian political prisoners is the story of mastering traumatic experiences that repeatedly came close to death, and the story of transforming this experience into high, simple and bright, which is especially clearly visible from the dark dungeon.”
On the cover is a prison drawing by Ales Pushkin, a nonconformist artist, a performer who gave his life for the national idea. The basis for the criminal prosecution of the creator were the paintings placed at the exhibition, and imprisonment turned out to be a death sentence.
