A Belarus bookshop has risked the wrath of the state to publish a Nobel prize winner’s novels.
The Lohvinau House of Literature is dedicated to publishing works by authors who don’t receive recognition frtom the state-run meida houses, including Svetlana Alexievich who won this year’s Nobel prize for literature. Alexievich’s books are hard to find in her home country because she criticises the authoritarian president, Aleksander Lukashenko.
For the past 15 years, Lohvinau has been the only publisher to print Alexievich’s books in Belarusian. (Alexievich writes in Russian).
The bookshop stocks 500 or so titles – fiction, poetry, art magazines and academic journals. Some of the works have been smuggled in from abroad or printed by sympathetic local printers. The works are distributed through personal networks, passed on to the offices of opposition political parties and private enthusiasts who sell them from home.
Read the full story here.