Alindarka’s Children (Dzieci Alindarkiis, 2014) is a contemporary novel about a brother and a sister interned in a camp. There, camp leaders make children forget their own language and speak the language of the colonizer. To achieve this, leaders use drugs as well as surgery on the larynx to cure the ‘illness’ of using the Belarusian language. When Alicia and Avi manage to escape, camp leaders pursue them. Now, the children have to survive for themselves in this adventure, which bears a likeness to an adult, literary Hansel and Gretel. The dialogue translates well to the guttural differences between English Received Pronunciation and Scots.
Jim Dingley translated the Russian and Belarusian into English and Petra Reid, author of MacSonnetries, translated Belarusian parts into Scots.