The Zekameron
Shortlisted for The Republic of Consciousness Prize 2024
Maxim Znak author Jim and Ella Dingley translator Valzhyna Mort editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Scotland Street Press
Published:1st Mar '23
£12.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
WINNER OF ENGLISH PEN AWARD 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE 2024
‘How did these stories get into your hands? They flew, as if painted by Marc Chagall, through prison walls, borders, and languages.’ - Valzhyna Mort
‘It’s a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny – full of dry wit and small biting observations.’ - Anna Vaught
100 stories written from prison in Belarus with 'echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett' (Michael Pursglove). Despite its bleak context, this is a fundamentally optimistic book, engaging comically, yet honestly, with what it means to be human. Translated from the Russian by Jim and Ella Dingley. With an introduction by ‘risen star of the international poetry world’ Valzhyna Mort.
Maxim Znak's message is that wry humour and humanity trump the cruel absurdities of the regime [...] These stories, one hundred of them, none longer than three pages, have echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett and, ultimately, of Giovanni Boccaccio and Vernon Kress, who used the punning title for his 1991 novel of the Gulag.
- Michael Pursglove
The fact that this book exists at all should be a miracle. Simply because the stories were smuggled out … The true sensation, however, is the mental achievement the prisoner Maxim Znak was capable of: that in his situation, which could really be called hopeless, he still possesses the internal freedom to create literature.
- Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung
[Znak] uses the weapons that dictators like Lukashenko detest most: humour, wit, publicity.
- Jens Uthoff, taz.die tageszeitung
It's a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny – full of dry wit and small biting observations.
- Anna Vaught
- Winner of Pen Translates 2023
ISBN: 9781910895757
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 19mm
Weight: 262g
272 pages