Meetings with Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič and translator, a staff member of the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Zurich Iryna Herasimovich. 

Moderator: Ala Pihalskaya

Alhierd Bacharevič, who was awarded the 2025 Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding (Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung) for his novel The Dogs of Europe, which was translated into German in 2024, will allow readers to complete the map of Eastern European literature and better understand the current situation in Belarus and the writer's work in exile.

Iryna Herasimovich is a a researcher in the campaign "Arts & Disinformation” supported by the Swiss National Fund (SNF). The campaign is organized jointly with Sylvia Sasse.

The campaign focuses on the artistic analysis of disinformation, examining the arts as a target of disinformation, as well as agitation, propaganda, and disinformation within the arts.

Iryna is one of the founder of the 33 Books for Another Belarus initiative. It aims to promote the publication of books that cannot be published in Belarus due to repression.

Link to the project: www.33booksforanotherbelarus.ch

The initiative establishes a network of publishing partners from various European countries, ready to assist with the publication of books by Belarusian authors. Thanks to the initiative, books by Belarusian authors are published by the Centre for Arts and Cultural Theory (ZKK) of the University of Zurich (UZH) in a German edition.FOTOtapeta.

Ala Pihalskaya, PhD in the field of Art History, research fellow at Bremen University, member of the Belarusian Book Institute.

With the kind support of the S. Fischer Stiftung.

EU4Belarus MOST IV Mobility Scheme funded by the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut.  Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the implementing institution can be held responsible for them.