The masterful English debut of Alhierd Bacharevic, a new voice from Belarus

Alicia and her brother Avi are imprisoned in a camp on the edge of a forest where children are trained to forget their language through therapy, coercion, drugs, and larynx surgery. The Leid (or Belarusian language) is considered a sickness to be cured and replaced by the only pure form of language, the Lingo (Russian). A contemporary Hansel and Gretel adventure, the children escape into the forest and end up in even greater danger…

A feat of translation, Bacharevic’s story is brilliantly rendered into English and Scots from Russian and Belarusian.