Holy spring

On the occasion of the 80th birthday of writer Uładzimir Niaklajeu in 2026, the Belarusian Cultural Centre in Białystok presents a volume of thirteen stories by the author, both in Belarusian – "Śviataja krynica", and in Polish translation entitled "Święte źródło".

Marcin Rębacz, translator: "All the stories present their original histories, while at the same time engaging in a dialogue with great literary traditions. They reinterpret ancient ideas and comment on the present. These are very different stories in terms of subject matter, literary form, and above all, the scale of narrative sweep. We have here a multi-generational mystical-existential story full of questions about life and death (In Every World), an elaborate, tragic-ironic image of the post-war countryside of the Belarusian-Lithuanian borderland (Miron and Miron), an image of contemporary Belarusian politics drawn with a thick, grotesque line (Klaudia Lwowna's Cat) or a nihilistic description of the consequences of post-war trauma—perennially relevant in the post-Soviet reality and so unique in literature (Khaibakh). Such selected stories do not create a thematically or formally coherent collection. Metaphysics borders on the grotesque, and a fairy tale—carrying faith in the victory of good—borders on the image of a thoroughly defeated world. However, such a selection of stories has a huge advantage, as it presents the versatility of Niaklajeu's talent, and also shows the Polish reader how much Belarusian literature can be similar to Polish and, at the same time, how much it can differ from it."