Category: Translated Literature

When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail, by Hanna Komar

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

Today on the blog we are featuring excerpts from Hanna Komar‘s When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail, translated by Hanna Komar and John Farndon (Skaryna Press, 2026). The book is an account of her arrest and imprisonment during the mass protests in Belarus in 2020 against fraudulent election results and in support of the recently arrested pro-democracy activist Maryia Kalesnikava. As Komar says in the Foreword, “I had to tell this story. But telling only my own story felt wrong […] At that time, I read The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. And so I began to collect voices, as she did.” Thus, Komar writes this book as a series of different “voices” representing both herself and others who were imprisoned along with her, as can be seen below; my heartfelt gratitude to Olga Zilberbourg for reproducing and editing screenshots that preserved the book’s layout. You can buy the book from Skaryna Press in English here, and if you are a Belarusian speaker, here, along with many other Belarusian-language titles. For those of us outside Belarus, buying books like Komar’s When I’m Out of Here is a way to show support for these writers and the larger movement they are a part of for a free Belarus.

Hanna Komar, When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail

Foreword

I knew you would     want to write this…

And so I wrote…

To understand — my own experience, and myself as part of the collective one.

In Belarus, the same dictator, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, has been in power for over 30 years, since 1994. The fraudulent presidential election on 9 August 2020 was followed by the largest mass peaceful protests in Belarusian history, met with unprecedented police brutality and systemic repression. At the time of this publication, over 1,200 political prisoners remain behind bars. Over 8,000 individuals have faced politically motivated criminal prosecution, and over 50,000 have experienced arbitrary detentions. All of them have been subjected to ill-treatment; psychological, physical and sexual violence; torture and other inhumane conditions. I was one of the 50,000. This is my story.

I was detained on 8 September 2020. It was when we were marching in support of Maryia Kalesnikava and other activists detained around that time. The extraordinary Maryia Kalesnikava was a professional flautist who became the head of Viktar Babaryka’s presidential campaign, and was one of the key figures of the fight against Lukashenka. Our march happened right the day after Maryia was suddenly kidnapped in the centre of Minsk by unidentified law enforcement officers. During the night, they took her to the Belarusian-Ukrainian border to deport her forcibly. But at the border crossing, Maryia tore up her passport, got out through the car window and walked towards the Belarusian border. They took her to prison and after a “trial” a year later condemned her to 11 years. Maryja was released on 13 December 2025.

Later in the day of the border incident, protesters gathered at various locations in Minsk in support of her. The march I attended was the largest. We were surrounded by the security forces which came out in large numbers, armed and masked, to break up the protest. By the evening, more than a hundred marchers had been grabbed forcibly and thrust into police vans to be taken off to prison — many of them women, including me. The targeting of women like that was new and seemed a turning point for us. After that, mass detentions of women were common at every women’s protest.

After a cold anxious night at a Pieršamajski police department, I was brought before a court the following day, still hoping for some justice. With little evidence but the police statement, the so-called court sentenced me to nine days of administrative arrest. I spent two days in Akrescina prison and then was transferred to the prison in Žodzina, where I received a care package from my friends outside. In that package, my flatmate and ally Alena included a little notebook, so, I kept a diary of my time in prison. It was difficult, but I forced myself to write down something — anything — even just dry observations and facts. Activities. Details. Thoughts. This was my way of finding meaning in what was happening. “You are a poet, a writer,” I thought to myself, “you are here anyway, and this is a unique experience: you can see this place, the one you’ve heard so much about, from the inside. You must write about it.”

At first, I imagined this would be a slim book about my own experience, but for six months after my release, I couldn’t even open that notebook. Then, on the day the court sentenced the journalists Katsiaryna Andrejeva and Darya Chultsova to two years in prison, I realised that as long as I was free, I had no right to remain silent. I had to tell this story. But telling only my own story felt wrong. I was also at a loss for words — my psyche refused to let me go deeper. At that time, I read The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. And so I began to collect voices, as she did.

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Hanna Komar is a Belarusian poet, translator, writer, and performer, whose work explores what it means to grow up as a girl — and later a young woman — in a strongly patriarchal, authoritarian country. Much of her writing comes from her own experience, trying to give voice to what is often left unsaid or unspeakable. She has published five poetry collections: Страх вышыні (Fear of Heights), the docupoetry book Мы вернемся (We’ll Return), and Вызвалі або бяжы (Set Me Free or Run) in Belarusian, and the bilingual collections Recycled and Ribwort. She is also the author of the non-fiction book When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail, which reflects on the collective experience of incarceration for peaceful protest in Belarus, and the play Body in Progress, about the cruelty of the Belarusian regime, exile, and her journey of healing. Her work has been translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Czech, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Danish, Italian, Russian, and Slovak, and she translates her own poetry into English. She is a member of PEN Belarus and an honorary member of English PEN. In 2021, she was a joint recipient of the Freedom of Speech Prize from the Norwegian Authors’ Union. She has an MA in Creative Writing: Writing the City from the University of Westminster and is completing a PhD exploring how poetry can support Belarusian women in sharing experiences of gender-based violence and patriarchy.

The International Day Against Homophobia: An Excerpt from Evgeny Shtorn’s The Refugee Chronicles, translated by Alexandra Novitskaya

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Evgeny Shtorn, a writer, activist, and scholar, was born and raised in Soviet Kazakhstan and later lived, studied, and worked in St. Petersburg, Russia. His LGBTQ+ activism made him a target of Russia’s intensifying state-managed homophobia, and in 2018, Shtorn was forced to leave the country. A human rights organization helped him obtain a visa to Ireland, where he received refugee status. As a refugee, Shtorn entered the system of “direct provision” that funnels asylum seekers in Ireland through a series of dormitory-style housing centers. Deprived of the right to work, surviving on basic assistance, and repeatedly questioned and probed by government bureaucrats, Shtorn was forced to share his personal space with strangers, often with incompatible backgrounds.

Continue reading “The International Day Against Homophobia: An Excerpt from Evgeny Shtorn’s The Refugee Chronicles, translated by Alexandra Novitskaya” →

Creating a Vivid World: A Q&A with Lisa C. Hayden, the translator of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 5 Comments
Book cover of My Dreadful Body

The publication of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body by New Vessel Press earlier this year is an important contribution to feminist russophone literature available to readers in English translation. Following the excerpt from this novel we published recently from the opening of the seventh chapter, “Tongue,” we’re taking the opportunity to dive a little deeper into the context, structure, and language of this remarkable book in our interview with its translator, Lisa C. Hayden. We are deeply grateful to Hayden, who also brought to anglophone readers books by Guzel Yakhina, Margarita Khemlin, Narine Abgaryan, Marina Stepnova, and Katerina Gordeeva, among others, for insights into her translation work.

Olga Zilberbourg: What considerations went into your decision to translate My Dreadful Body?

Continue reading “Creating a Vivid World: A Q&A with Lisa C. Hayden, the translator of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body” →

Tongue: An Excerpt from Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body, translated by Lisa C. Hayden

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 1 Comment

We’re celebrating today the arrival of an eagerly anticipated novel that portrays the life of a young woman from a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia. A feminist poet, essayist, scholar, and educator, Egana Djabbarova is the author of five books in Russian. In English, her work has previously appeared in the anthology F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry, edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Ainsley Morse (read our conversation with Ostashevsky and Morse). My Dreadful Body is Djabbarova’s first book in translation to English. The team behind this book includes Lisa C. Hayden, a beloved and celebrated translator from Russian, and New Vessel Press, an indie publisher specializing in literature in translation with a very strong list of titles from the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Continue reading “Tongue: An Excerpt from Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body, translated by Lisa C. Hayden” →

Seven Forty: Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine by Mikhail Goldis, translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marat Grinberg

~ Yelena Furman ~ 3 Comments
Memoirs of a Jew who prosecuted criminals in Soviet Ukraine – The Forward

We are happy to feature an excerpt from Mikhail Goldis’s Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine (Academic Studies Press, 2024), translated by Marat Grinberg, professor of Russian and humanities at Reed College and Goldis’s grandson. Grinberg’s previous book was the highly informative The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (Brandeis University Press, 2022). The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf makes the original argument that, in the anti-Semitic Soviet Union, Jews circumvented the proscriptions on public expression of Jewish identity “through their ‘reading practices'”: they built up home libraries of books on Jewish subjects, which, given “the heavy censorship of Jewish content,” they often had to read “between the lines” (the citations are from my review). Olga interviewed Marat about his book, and you can listen to their rich conversation here, which includes reading suggestions of the various writers the book discusses.

Continue reading “Seven Forty: Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine by Mikhail Goldis, translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marat Grinberg” →

Video from Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those of you who could attend our event, Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War, hosted by the Wende Museum on March 28. We loved having you as our audience and hope to continue the conversations in various ways.

Thank you for donating to Ukraine Trust Chain. Ukraine needs all of our support. Please continue to spread the word and donate here: https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

The video from our event is now online:

Continue reading “Video from Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War” →

Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 2 Comments

This one of a kind reading brings together Soviet-born writers as they weave together an intricate story of identity, memory, cultural intersections, immigration, and war. From fiction to poetry, memoir and journalism, and work in translation, the reading presents a deep dive into the individual and collective experiences of the Soviet-born diaspora in the U.S. This free event includes a fundraiser in support of humanitarian aid in Ukraine and aligns with The Wende Museum’s current exhibition “Undercurrents II: Archives and the Making of Soviet Jewish Identity.” Autographed books will be on sale, courtesy of Village Well.

Hosted by The Wende Museum, readers include poets, writers, and translators: Katya Apekina, Yelena Furman, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Julia Kolchinsky, Arina Kole, Maria Kuznetsova, Olga Livshin, Ruth Madievsky, Ainsley Morse, Luisa Muradyan, Jane Muschenetz, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Diana Ruzova, Timmy Straw, Vlada Teper, Sasha Vasilyuk, and Olga Zilberbourg.

Continue reading “Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War” →

Narrating a Violent Childhood: A Q&A with Fiona Bell and Margarita Vaysman about Avdotya Panaeva’s The Talnikov Family

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 4 Comments

Avdotya Panaeva was born in 1820 and first began publishing her work in one of Russia’s premier literary magazines, Sovremennik, in 1846. The author of numerous short stories, novels, memoirs, as well as collaborative projects, she has only recently begun to achieve the recognition that she deserves in the English-speaking world.

On October 8, 2024, Columbia University Press published Fiona Bell’s translation of Panaeva’s first novel, The Talnikov Family. This became the second full-length translation of Panaeva’s work to English. In my review of the book in On the Seawall, I mention several social and historical factors that have kept this delightful novel from English-language readers for so long. In writing about this book, I have relied, in part, on Bell’s introduction to the novel and on the research by Margarita Vaysman, whose book Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel devotes a section to Panaeva’s work, including an excerpt that ran in Punctured Lines.

Today, it is my pleasure to discuss this novel and Panaeva’s work more broadly with her translator Fiona Bell and scholar Margarita Vaysman.

Continue reading “Narrating a Violent Childhood: A Q&A with Fiona Bell and Margarita Vaysman about Avdotya Panaeva’s The Talnikov Family” →

Ugrinovich and the Sex Giant: Fiction by Anna Natalia Malachowskaja, translated by Anastasia Savenko-Moore

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Anna Natalia Malachowskaja is a well-known Soviet and Russian author, feminist, and dissident. In 1979, together with Tatiana Goricheva, Tatiana Mamonova, and Julia Voznesenskaya, she wrote and edited a feminist samizdat publication Женщина и Россия [Woman and Russia] and later Maria. These publications were deemed anti-Soviet; the women were questioned by the KGB and forced to emigrate. Having settled in Austria, Malachowskaja completed her Ph.D. at the University of Salzburg. She turned her research into the Russian folklore character of Baba Yaga into a series of published books where she argues that the fairy tale character is a marginalization and amalgamation of three goddesses of the ancient world. In addition to her scholarship, Malachowskaja is the author of novels, collections of stories, and poems. Malachowskaja’s fiction is frequently accompanied by art. As an artist, she has exhibited her work in St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Salzburg.

Continue reading “Ugrinovich and the Sex Giant: Fiction by Anna Natalia Malachowskaja, translated by Anastasia Savenko-Moore” →

Poems Betwixt Paths: Herb Randall in Conversation with Irina Mashinski

~ Yelena Furman ~ 2 Comments

We are grateful to Herb Randall and Irina Mashinski for bringing us this interview about poetry, translation, music, and more. Both of them have appeared on Punctured Lines previously. An excerpt from Irina Mashinski’s hybrid poetry and prose collection The Naked World can be found here (while Herb Randall’s review of it in the Los Angeles Review of Books is here). At Punctured Lines, Herb Randall has contributed a personal essay about visiting Kharkiv and looking for traces of an English woman who moved there during Stalin’s reign and a review of Sana Krasikov’s The Patriots, about an American Jewish woman who also moves to Stalin’s Soviet Union (a clearly misguided endeavor from any country). We are very happy to have them back with the following in-depth discussion.

Continue reading “Poems Betwixt Paths: Herb Randall in Conversation with Irina Mashinski” →