Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Russian and Belarusian by Jim Dingley and Petra Reid

I read a lot of translated fiction, but I am struggling to think of a book for which the translators play such a role as in this. Bacharevic’s original was in Russian with parts of it in it supposed minority of Belarusian. Translators Dingley and Reid work their magic, and these become the Lingo and the Leid, or more simply, English and Scots.

It’s quite appropriate also, as this is a novel about language.

In a camp deep within a forest is a Doctor who trains children to lose their native language and to speak ‘correctly’. Two children, sister and brother, Alicia and Avi, are at the camp until they are freed by their father, but soon after they manage to get away, they are separated again and left to wander the forest, as Hansel and Gretel did. In part at least, it reads as a dark fairy tale.

The ‘pure’ language of the Doctor is Russian, while the children’s father wants them to speak Belarusian.

As a novel in translation it is therefore arguably more powerful than in its original language. Something I don’t think I’ve ever come across before.

When Avi speaks to his sister, he says things like..

Ah’m wunnerin whare we are?…If Faither waur tae phone us the noo, whit wad we tell tae him.

And Dingley and Reid take it a step further, because the siblings speak in Scots, they seem distinctly Scottish in other aspects; snippets from Scottish poets and folklore are used regularly. Though of course they are in Belarus.

It’s an incredible feat by the translators. I’ve no doubt the novel must lack some of the detail and coherence of the original, but I’m prepared to overlook any of its few faults, and this really is a fascinating and outstanding piece of work, the likes of which I have read nothing even similar.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5