How I spent this summer

The author did not intend to write prison prose. Life had other plans. He went through an experience that usually remains behind closed doors and decided to tell this story honestly: without tragedies for effect and without attempting to claim heroism. This book became a way for the author to come to terms with what he had experienced and, at the same time, a gift to the reader who wants to understand Belarus not through news headlines, but through honest human experience.

BELARUS WITHOUT A FILTER
This book is for "tourists," both external and internal.
Not those who come to see clean avenues and smooth roads, but those who want to truly know the country.
This is a guide. Based on personal experience.
Life in prison after the 2020 protests.
Year after year, the soulless machine of repression breaks, suffocates, kills.

MIRROR FOR THE HERO
Belarus is shown without slogans and without makeup: absurd, funny, harsh, unexpectedly kind, and deeply human intertwine as only life itself can do.
One person's story becomes a mirror of the times and a silent invitation to look at one's own reflection in it.
People and Fates caught in one endless spiral.

HUMOR AS A WEAPON
They say that sometimes laughter is the last weapon we have left.
Well... It's time to arm ourselves.
The author writes about Belarus not as a political scientist or a publicist, but as a person who has gone through it all and retained the ability to look at what is happening clearly, honestly, and with a slight squint.
Only a strong character and a sense of humor allow a person to survive in inhumane conditions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anton Belyaev was born in 1986 in Minsk.
In Minsk, he studied, worked, lived, and would have continued to live, if not for the events described in the book.

The author was an average person who went to work, met friends, had hobbies, and built relationships.
Sometimes he wrote poetry, played guitar, took photographs, and loved tinkering with old cars.
He went from being a talk show host on BT to a radio program director, and then "soared" first to sound engineer, then to self-employed.
In 2020, he supported the protests after the elections and ended up in prison.
He received a sentence of "home chemistry" (restricted freedom).
In 2025, he decided to flee the country.
Now he lives and works in Poland.
Strangely enough, it was a series of tragic events that made the author an author: reflecting, he wrote his "guide" to prisons in the form of a school essay.