Description

This is a collection of travel essays and reports based on the author’s journeys to the most remote corners of Belarus. This book contains no widely known facts and almost no famous plots. Instead, the author has gathered stories that witnesses dared to tell only at the very end of their lives.

Nevertheless, these facts and stories form a vivid picture of 20th-century Belarus, and one cannot say that this picture is incomplete or untrue. It tells of the boundary between good and evil within the soul of the Belarusian person—a line that some crossed while looting manor houses, while others refused to cross, instead choosing to spread enlightenment and cultivate prosperity.

The title, “The Master Had a Talking Sparrow…”, refers to a folk saying and emphasizes the absurdity and, at the same time, the drama of human fates in the 20th century.