Scottish indie sells translation to Bacharevič's 'Belarusian manifesto'

Independent publishing house Scotland Street Press has sold US rights to New Directions press in New York for its translation of Alindarka’s Children, a novel centred on the political oppression of the Belarusian people.

Written by Alhierd Bacharevič, author and political exile, Alindarka’s Children is the story of those taught to forget their native language, Belarusian, and to speak Russian, the language of their colonizers. In 2015 the novel received the Book of the Year prize in Belarus, and came third in the Giedroyc Prize competition.
 
In September 2020, Scotland Street Press translated Bacharevič’s original, with the Russian becoming English and the Belarusian becoming Scots. The intent was to make this story accessible to more readers, using alternative languages to make them understand emotionally and intellectually the language politics at play. 

This translation by Jim Dingley and Petra Reid earned the press an English PEN Translates Award and a nomination for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. The new rights sale to the New York press aims to reinforces the importance of the work by bringing it to more English-speaking readers, the press said. New Directions will publish Alindarka’s Children in spring/summer 2022.

On the translation of his work, Bacharevič said: "Alindarka’s Children has become a literary castle; its walls, towers and corridors have been designed by Jim Dingley and Petra Reid with all the skills of true poets who know literature, demanding anglophone readers can make up their own minds, and for this I thank them."
 
Jean Findlay, head of publishing at Scotland Street Press, said: "This translation has been a long and thrilling adventure and we are excited that the novel will gain a new audience across the pond."
 
Mieke Chew, co-director of publicity at New Directions, said: "New Directions is honoured to introduce Alhierd Bacharevič’ to American readers with this brilliant translation of Alindarka’s Children by Jim Dingley and Petra Reid. Bacharevič’s masterful English debut, told in exhilarating prose, is a manifesto to the Belarusian language and soul. We feel very fortunate to have heard of Bacharevič’s work via the Republic of Consciousness Prize and to partner for the first time with Scotland Street Press to this new voice from Belarus to more Anglophone readers."