Zecameron. Poems. Conversations

This book is the voice of Maksim Znak , a Belarusian lawyer and writer, a political prisoner, who has been deprived of the right to correspond and meet with his relatives and defenders since February 9, 2023. As of early May 2024, neither his family nor his lawyer have had any information about Maksim for more than 450 days. In international law, such detention is classified as torture and is called "incommunicado." In the practice of international human rights mechanisms, it is on a par with enforced disappearances - one of the most serious human rights violations.

The texts of this collection were created during the first year of detention in a pre-trial detention center, when creative activity behind bars and communication were still possible.

Despite the circumstances, in a cramped cell and difficult conditions, Maxim retained the strength of spirit and creative freedom that allowed him to reach through the bars into a vast space, combining the ironic and the serious, the light and the deep, the lyrical and the everyday.

And – despite the circumstances – the reader of this book can become part of the conversations with Maxim, visit him in his cell, where over a cup of tea they can joke about the sad or argue about the lofty. Or simply read the texts and sing songs to Maxim's words, giving them a voice they currently lack.

The first part of this book is the collection "Zekameron", which has already been published in Belarusian, Russian, English, German, and Swedish. "Zekameron" is 100 stories with observations and notes of an absolutely normal person who found himself in an absolutely abnormal place for him. The second part of the book is poems written during the first year of imprisonment. The third part of the book is conversations that never happened, but which formed like a puzzle from small pieces of what Maxim said or heard.

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