Three books by writers from Belarus, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Sotnikov and My Life.
Belarus's best-known writer is Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. Her books are built from interviews with witnesses, including survivors of the Second World War and of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. Writers in Belarus have worked in both Belarusian and Russian, Alexievich in Russian. War in the villages and forests runs through much of the country's twentieth-century fiction.
Vasil Bykau's Sotnikov, translated from Belarusian, sets two partisans against capture and a moral test in occupied Belarus. His Sign of Misfortune turns to a village under Soviet collectivisation and then Nazi occupation, seen through one peasant couple. Marc Chagall, famous as a painter, wrote the memoir My Life about growing up in Jewish Vitebsk, with its streets, family life and traditions.
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Two Belarusian partisans face capture and a moral test in occupied Belarus during the Second World War, among its winter forests and villages.
Chagall's memoir of growing up in Jewish Vitebsk in the Russian Empire, with its streets, family life and traditions.
A Belarusian village under Soviet collectivization and then Nazi occupation, told through one peasant couple's ordeal.
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