Holy spring

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the birth of writer Uladzimir Niakliayeu, which falls in 2026, the Center for Belarusian Culture in Białystok presents a collection of thirteen stories by the author, both in Belarusian – "Sviataya krynitca" ("Holy Spring") – and in Polish translation titled "Święte źródło".

Marcin Rembach, translator: "Each of the stories presents its own original narrative and simultaneously enters into a dialogue with great literary traditions. They reinterpret ancient ideas and comment on the present day. These stories are very different in terms of subject matter, literary form, and above all, the scale of narrative scope. Here one can find a multi-generational mystical-existential story full of questions about life and death ("Na usiakim svece" / "In Every World"), an expansive tragic-ironic portrait of a post-war village in the Belarusian-Lithuanian borderlands ("Miron dy Miron" / "Miron and Miron"), a depiction of contemporary Belarusian politics drawn with a bold, grotesque stroke ("Kot Klaudzii Lvoŭny" / "Klaudia Lvovna's Cat"), as well as a nihilistic description of the aftermath of post-war trauma—eternally relevant in post-Soviet reality and so unique in literature ("Khaybakh" / "Khaibakh"). Such a selection of stories does not create a thematically or formally unified collection. Metaphysics coexists with a grotesque element, and a fairy tale that carries faith in the victory of good—with a portrait of an utterly defeated world. However, such a selection has a great advantage: it demonstrates the versatility of Niakliayeu's talent, and for the Polish reader, it also shows how similar Belarusian literature can be to Polish literature, and at the same time, how strongly it is capable of differing from it."