Alhierd Baharevich


Alhierd Baharevich is a Belarusian writer and translator.
In 1997 he graduated from the Philological Faculty of the Belarusian Pedagogical University in Minsk. Afterward, Bacharevič worked as a teacher of Belarusian and then as a journalist. His first texts were published in 1993. In the 1990s, he was one of the founders of the Belarusian literary and artistic avantgarde group :be:Бум-Бам-Літ|Bum-Bam-Lit. In 1998, this group published the now cult anthology of their poetry, namely, Tazik biełaruski. At that time Bacharevič married Ksienija Brečka. They have one daughter, Uljana. Between 2007 and 2013, Bacharevič lived in Hamburg, Germany. In 2013, he returned to Minsk and married the Belarusian translator and poet, Julia Cimafiejeva. Now they live in the Belarusian capital and cooperate in the field of Belarusian literature and culture.

Writing career

Alhierd Bacharevič is the leading Belarusian-language author of novels, including the novels Magpie on the Gallows, and Šabany: The Story of One Disappearance, Alindarka’s Children, or White Fly, Murderer of Men. The publishing house Lohvinaŭ published an over 900-page novel in six parts Dogs of Europe, which is deemed to be the writer's opus magnum. The novel received in Belarus the Book of the Year award and was noted in Belarus with the independent Reader's Prize and the second Jerzy Gedroyc Prize. In 2019, the Moscow publishing house Vremia published the Russian translation of this novel.
The works by Alhierd Bacharevič were translated into English, French, German, Czech, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian. In 2008, a collection by Alhierd Bacharevič's selected stories was translated into Polish “Talent do jąkania się”. In 2010, in Leipzig, the novel Magpie on the Gallows was published in German in the translation by Thomas Weiler. In 2015, the story of Bakharevich The Talent of Stuttering was included in the anthology of the best European short prose “Best European Fiction”. In 2017, the Small Medical Encyclopedia by Bacharevič was published in Polish in the Lublin Warsztaty Kultury publishing house. In 2018, the novel Children of Alindarki was published by the publishing house "Le ver a soie" in the French translation of Alena Lapatnoiva.
Alhierd Bacharevič translated the fairy tale The Cold Heart by Wilhelm Hauff, which was published at the end of 2009 under one cover with an independent work entitled The Translator's Afterword. Translated from the German language, individual works of the brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, G. G. Evers, poems by Hans Enzensberger and other modern German poets and the novel by the modern German writer Kathrin Schmidt You will not die. He took part in the Berlin Literary Colloquium, the Theater Festival in Lublin, the Literary Festivals Vilenica, the Lesefest Osteuropa, The Month of Author Reading in Brno, international literary festivals in Sweden, Ukraine, Lithuania, Czech Republic and others. He has performed at international book fairs in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Warsaw, Lviv, Minsk. In 2014, he represented Belarus at the International European Writers Conference in Berlin.
In 2012, after the members' angry reaction to the publication of Alhierd Bacharevič's essay The Dark Past of Kayan Lupaki on Janka Kupała in 2011, he left the Union of Belarusian Writers. He had been a member of this Union since 2006. Bacharevič is a member of the Belarusian PEN Club.
In 2015, a performance was staged on the Small Stage of the Yanka Kupala State Theater based on the novel Šabany by Alhierd Bacharevič.

Novels and short story collections

In the 1990s he was the founder and vocalist of the first Belarusian-language punk band :be-tarask:Правакацыя |Правакацыя.