Zbych Slupoŭsky
Kinship (satire novel)
The novel's characters are part of multiple generations that go through upheavals and catastrophes throughout history: Revolution, collectivisation, war, collaboration, the Holocaust, moving out of the villages into the cities, the fall of communism, and so on. Not only one's own life is determined by which side one finds oneself on at the next break in history, but also that of the following generations. Again and again, the fronts run right through families and communities, as in fact was and is the case in Belarus.
The author playfully exposes a number of stereotypes that still prevail in Belarusian society today and shows in a humorous and uncanny way that there were no straight lines in Belarusian history and that one must inevitably enter the tangled web of dark stories if one wants to get closer to the truth about this space.
Zbignew Leo-Piotr Slupowski aka Zbych Slupoŭsky (pen name) was born on 29 February 1971 in Witrumiczy, Baranawiczy region, into a Jewish-Polish family. His father began his career as a melamed, later becoming the chief regional tax inspector. His mother came from a family of functionaries of the Polish United Workers' Party who had to leave for Belarus after the 1968 crisis. Sbych was always an excellent student. After finishing school in Witrumiczy, he began his studies at the tractor construction faculty of Baranovichy State University. Later, he transferred to the Agricultural Academy in Gorky to study agricultural prosperity. After his studies, he received his doctoral degree from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus in 1997 on the fertilisation of animals under conditions of radioactive contamination. At the same time he worked as an author and translator. In 2020, the publishing house “Halijafy” published Sbych Slupoŭsky's first novel “Essays on Contemporary Regional Studies”. Currently, Slupoŭsky works at the Institute of Agricultural Biophysics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. He has more than 100 scientific papers and certificates of successful fertilisation treatments on animals to his credit. He is married and has two cats.
In view of the political situation in Belarus, the author's biography is fictitious for safety reasons, and his person remains unknown.
Halijafy is an independent publishing house founded in Belarus in 2007. On 16 April 2022, it had to cease its publishing activities by decision of the Belarusian Ministry of Information.
For 15 years, Halijafy Verlag was able to publish books by contemporary Belarusian authors that the state did not want to support. On the other hand, these works have repeatedly stimulated creative processes in the country and contributed significantly to the preservation and further development of the Belarusian literary language. Among the authors published by Halijafy Verlag are writers such as Volha Hapeyeva, Alhierd Baharevich, Julia Cimafeeva and Valiantsin Akudovich, whose translations of their books have left an indelible mark on Belarusian discourse in the German-speaking world.
Halijafy's publications have been awarded several non-governmental literary prizes in Belarus, including twice being nominated “Book of the Year”.
Publisher has not yet been determined.