Description

A new novel by a well-known Belarusian author explores the timely topic of the lives and experiences of emigrants from Belarus. How do you adapt to a foreign environment? What will remain in the places they left behind in their homeland—in their apartments, on their rooftops, at their workplaces? How can they maintain their ties to Belarus when their new reality is unconsciously swallowing them up?

The novel’s main characters—a married Belarusian couple living in Berlin—unexpectedly learn of the launch of a special state program in Belarus. Residents of the Russian “provinces” move in to take the place of those who left the country and cannot return. Not only are they resettled, but they are also granted the identities of those who left—the same first and last names, the same passports; they are reinstated in their former jobs and housed in their predecessors’ apartments. How will this end?