Ears under Your Sickle — uncensored edition

Under this cover lies the deep and masterfully crafted historical novel "Ears of Grain Under Thy Sickle" by Uladzimir Karatkevich, invariably the most beloved work of Belarusian literature. But today, the author's personality is no less important to us than the twists and turns of the plot. And when we pick up a book, we want to hear the author's voice without the rustle of a censor's pencil.

Outside of Belarus, the novel is being published in Belarusian for the first time. In this edition, we not only publish the exact text that the author fought for during his lifetime, removing the edits made for the 1968 edition. Carefully, guided by textual empathy, we make several important conjectures, thereby freeing the writer's voice from ideological pressure. We restore certain word forms that were unacceptable in Soviet times, but are now completely common – and it turns out that Karatkevich wrote them that way! We restore autocensorship cuts: the novel was written by a brave man, but it was a rational man who sent it to print. The names of those who made Karatkevich common – and nobody's, by deleting "Belarus," "Belarusians," "Podniprovye," and "Raka" from the text – have been forgotten. And the words have again taken their rightful place on the pages.

"Ears of Grain Under Thy Sickle" is a journey not only to the eve of the 1863–1864 uprising, but also into the world of emotions of a person who might not have been the first to notice the unjust sweeping under the rug of true Belarusian history, but was one of the first who acutely could not remain silent. The voices of his characters, their destinies, even if idealized, could not and should not have been otherwise: only by fully regaining what is ours can we hope for the harmony of balance.