The Zekameron

The 100 tales in The Zekameron are based on the 14th century Decameron, but Znak is closer to Beckett than to Boccaccio. Banality and brutality vie with the human ability to overcome oppression. Znak’s stories in different voices chart 100 days in prison in Belarus today. The tone is laconic, ironic; the humour dry. The stories bear witness to resistance and self-assertion and the genuine warmth and appreciation of fellow prisoners.

‘Zekameron’ derives from the Russian word zek, an abbreviation formed by the names of two letters of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet – зк; it stands for zakliuchonny, a word that originally referred to a convict held in a Soviet labour camp. The word now has the general sense of ‘prisoner’.

Born in Minsk in 1981, international lawyer Maxim Znak was arrested in autumn 2020 and sentenced to ten years in prison in 2021. He is in prison in Belarus and is recognised by Amnesty as a prisoner of conscience. Znak wrote these stories from within prison, and they later found their way outside the prison walls.