Viktar Martinowich

Victor Martinovich (Belarusian: Віктар Вале́р'евіч Марціновіч, Viktar Marcinovič, Russian: Ви́ктор Вале́рьевич Мартино́вич; born (1977-09-09)September 9, 1977) is a Belarusian writer and art historian.

Victor Martinovich
Martinovich signing his book Paranoia, Literaturhaus Zürich, April 8, 2015
Native name	Віктар Марціновіч
Born	(1977-09-09) September 9, 1977 (age 46) Ashmyany, Belarus
Occupation	Writer, journalist, art critic
Alma mater	Belarusian State University (PhD) Vilnius Academy of Arts (PhD)
Genre	Antiutopia, adventure, detective
Years active	2009-present
Website
martinovich.by

Biography

Victor Martinovich was born in Ashmyany, Belarus. In 1999 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Belarusian State University (BSU), and in 2002 he obtained a PhD from BSU with a thesis about the Vitebsk avant-garde art in Soviet newspapers of the 1920s.^[1]

From 2002 to 2015, he was a deputy editor-in-chief of the BelGazeta newspaper.^[2]

On June 27, 2008, at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), he defended his PhD thesis on the topic "Vitebsk avant-garde (1918-1922): socio-cultural context and art criticism".^[3]

He is an associate professor at the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania).

Victor Martinovich is an author of 6 fiction novels, 7 plays, 1 non-fiction books, numerous academic articles and essays.

Since 2018, he has been collaborating with Thomas Wiedling Literary Agency.

Fiction novels

Since 2009, Victor Martinovich has written 6 novels. The novels were written in Belarusian or Russian alternately (and thanks to translators are available in both languages). Most of the novels have also been translated into European languages and published in the USA, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Latvia. Victor Martinovich books received attention and awards from Belarusian and Russian literature societies.^[4][5][6], among others he received the Encouragement Award of the European Science Fiction Society in 2014 ^[7].

Paranoia

His first fiction book, Paranoia, was published in 2009. The book was published in Russia (AST Publishing) and was banned for sale in Belarus. The text was positively reviewed in the New York Review in 2010 by Timothy Snyder^[8] and in the New York Times in 2013 by Arkady Ostrovsky.^[9] In 2012, Paranoia was published in Finland. In 2013, North Western University Press published an English translation of Paranoia, prepared by Diane Nemec Ignashev, Professor of Slavic Literature at Carleton University. The foreword to the book was written by Timothy Snyder.^[10] In 2014, German translation of the book is published by Voland und Quist and received positive reviews in Frankfurter Allgemeine zeitung,^[11] Tagesspiegel,^[12] and German Culture radio.

Cold Paradise

The second fiction novel by Victor Martinovich Cold Paradise has been published as e-release in Belarusian language on the label Piarshak. Cold Paradise is a political thriller and literary puzzle at the same time. It tells a story of a girl who fled from the country after a long hunt by local secret services. Narration guides us through the series of episodes that totally destroy our first impression of what could be a nice love story.

In 2012, Victor Martinovich was recognized with the Debut Literary Award named after Maksim Bahdanovich in prose for his novel "Cold Paradise"^[13].

Sphagnum

The third Martinovich's fiction book Sphagnum was presented to public 2013 in Belarusian (in translation of Vital Ryzhkou) and in Russian (release on the label Piarshak). It became best-selling novel in Belarusian language, leader of the charts during couple of months. Together with good sales it received positive critics inside Belarus. Agents and publishers have called this novel “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in the Belarusian province” and put into the “gangster comedy” niche, but it's also intellectual “anti-detective” story.

Mova

Victor Martinovich's next novel Mova was written and released in Belarusian in the genre of social dystopia in 2014. Later it was translated into Russian and published on the label Piarshak. In 2016 it was published in German in Voland und Quist in translation by Thomas Weiler. In 2018 the novel was republished by btb (Penguin Random House). The novel depicts Minsk in the year 2044 as a provincial town in the north-west of the United States of China and Russia. Family and love are considered to be out-dated concepts, spiritual needs are fulfilled by consuming and advertising. Despite draconian punishments a particular drug somehow and repeatedly manages to get into the country: mova (mova means a language in Belarusian). Anyone who reads a mova note, hardly understands a word, but experiences a wonderfully euphoric high.

Lake of Joy

The novel Lake of Joy was written in Russian and published by liberal and pro-european Russian publishing house Vremia, well-known for it's work with a Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich and dissident literature.

The book has been called by some critics a coming-of-age novel. It tells a story about belarusian girl Yasya, who wends her wondrous way between the sleeping Tsarina Agna and the lunar crater Lacus Gaudii, struggling to get out of her messed-up life and into a more human, even if not brighter, future.

In 2018 Lake of Joy was screened by the German director of Belarusian origin Alexei Paluyan. The film received numerous European awards and after the victory at L.A. Shorts was nominated for Oscar 2021. In February 2021 it was long-listed for Oscar 2021.

Night

The novel "Night" was released in 2018 in Belarusian, later published in translation edited by Elena Shubina of AST publishing house (Moscow). On the publisher's website, the novel is described as follows: "Night is both an anti-utopia, a novel-travelogue and a novel-game. The world is plunged into an endless cold night. In the free town of Grushevka, water is on a schedule, the only newspaper "Gazeta" is copied and the compass does not work. The protagonist Knizhnik is the owner of the town's only library and last dog. Taking a map of the new world and a volume of Herodotus, Knizhnik sets out to find the woman he loves, who at the time of the blackout was in Nepal..."^[14]

Revolution

Victor Martinovich began working on the novel Revolution in the early 2010s, and the book was published in Belarus in 2020, and in the Russian publishing house Vremya in 2021.

The novel tells a story of a professor at a private Moscow university who unwillingly becomes a member of a powerful criminal organization.  An unknown organization, which knows everything about him, including his financial debts, blackmails him into carrying out "small favors". Why is anyone interested in him at all? As a professor at the university he turns free-thinking minds to a perfect fit for industry and government use. Knowledge is power. And his will to power is the only rational means by which the chaos in the nation might be controlled. That is the situation as presented to him by the godfather of the organization. He feels intellectually flattered, and carries on.

Awarded translations

In 2017 german translator Thomas Weiler received an award for the Straelen Translator Prize 2017 for his translation of Victor Martinovich's novel Paranoia.The prize was presented on June 13, 2017 at the European College of Translators in Straelen by the President of the Art Foundation Dr. Fritz Behrens.

The contest committee noted that "Thomas Weiler received the sponsorship award for the Straelen Translator Prize 2017 for his translation of Paranoia, a work by the Belarusian author Victor Martinovich that combines a love story and an anti-utopian dictatorship novel. Lyrisms, observation protocols, technical and official language, a romantically high tone, colloquial language, Nabokovian micro-observations, word games - the most diverse stylistic registers in Thomas Weiler are full of juice and power"^[15].

In the Spring of 2023 Victor's Martinovich's novel Mova translated by Māra Poliakova, published by "Prometheus", was recognized as the winner of the Latvian Literary Award (LALIGABA) in the "Best Prose Translation in Latvian" category^[16]. The contest committee awarded Māra Poliakova "for the skillful and steady work of the translator who embodied the prophetic dystopia of the Belarusian author in Latvian, convincingly showing the coding (and narcotic) effect of language".

Art history

In October–December 2014, he was engaged in research work at the Institute for the Humanities in Vienna where, within the framework of the Milena Jesenská Fellowship for Journalists, he prepared a work about the Vitebsk period of Marc Chagall. In 2016 the monograph named Rodina. Marc Chagall in Vitebsk published in the publishing house of European Humanities University and in 2017 republished in the leading Russian scientific publishing house New Literary Review.^[17]

Film adaptations

In 2018 Vozera radasti [be], based on the novel Lake of Joy, was filmed by the German director of Belarusian origin Alexei Paluyan. The film received numerous European awards and after the victory at L.A. Shorts was nominated for Oscar 2021; in February 2021 it was longlisted for Oscar.

Drama

In 2014 Victor Martinovich started a collaboration with Vienna based theater Ganymed. In 2015 his mini play The best place on Earth was staged by Ganymed in Kunsthistorisches museum inVienna as part of Ganymed Dreaming project. Mini play was dedicated to Samuel van Hoogstraten’s painting Old Man in a Window.

In 2016 composed a play The Armor of God performed by Ganymed in an armory of Schloss Ambras (Innsbruk). Play was dedicated to the revolution in Ukraine.

In 2017 Martinovich debuted as a playwright in Belarus with a drama Dr. Raus’ Fortune dedicated to a pioneering Slavic publisher Francysk Skaryna. The play premiered at the Theater of national drama and ran successfully until 2021 until it was canceled for censorship reasons.

In 2021 Victor Martinovich composed a mini play Child with a Child dedicated to the painting Madonna with child by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, performed by Ganymed project in Saint Petersburg's Hermitage museum in the framework of the international theater project Ermitage Flora.

In 2022 Revolution, the play based on Victor Martinovich’s novel, debuted in Deutsches Schauspielhaus, the biggest German language drama theater in the world.^[18] The play is directed by Dušan David Pařízek.

In spring 2023, the play based on Victor Martinovich’s Revolution debuted at Muenchner Volkstheater. The play is directed by Philipp Arnold.^[19]

In autumn 2023 a play dedicated to Georg Kestner’s Fabian debuted on the stage of Muenchner Volkstheater. Victor was one of the playwrights who contributed to the text.^[20]

Facts

In 2021, during the 2020-2021 Belarusian protests, 558 copies of his last book, Revolution, were confiscated.^[21] At the same time, Belarusian customs forbad mailing the book to any other country.^[22]

Bibliography (books published in Belarus and Russia)

• Революция. Москва. Время. 2021
• Рэвалюцыя (Revolution). Knihazbor, Minsk 2020, ISBN 978-985-7227-71-6
• Ночь. Москва. АСТ. Редакция Елены Шубиной. 2019
• Ноч (Night), Knihazbor, Minsk 2018, ISBN 978-985-7207-28-2
• Родина. Марк Шагал в Витебске (Homeland. Marc Chagall in Vitebsk). NLO, Moscow 2017, ISBN 978-5-4448-0563-3
• Озеро радости. Москва. Время. 2016
• Возера радасці (Lake of Happiness). Knihazbor, Minsk 2016, ISBN 978-985-7144-51-8
• Мова 墨瓦 (Mova). Knihazbor, Minsk 2014, ISBN 978-985-7089-80-2
• Cфагнум (Sphagnum). Knihazbor, Minsk 2013, ISBN 978-985-7057-63-4
• Сцюдзёны вырай (Сold paradise). Piarshak, Minsk 2011
• Паранойя (Paranoia). AST, Moscow 2009, ISBN 978-5-17-062385-3

Bibliography (books published in Europe and the USA)

• Paranoia. Northwestern University Press. 2013. Translated by Diane Nemec Ignashev. (in English)
• Paranoia. Like. 2013. Translated by Anna Taitto. (In Finnish)
• Paranoia. Voland & Quist. Translated by Thomas Weiler. (in German)
• Mova. Voland & Quist. 2016. Translated by Thomas Weiler.  (in German)
• Paranoia. btb Verlag. 2017. Translated by Thomas Weiler.  (in German)
• Mova. btb Verlag. 2019. Translated by Thomas Weiler.  (in German)
• Revolution. Verlag Voland & Quist. 2021. Translated by Thomas Weiler.  (in German)
• Nacht. Europa Verlag. Translated by Franziska Zwerg. 2023 (in German)
• Paranoia. Ersatz. Translated by Ann Wikström. 2023. (in Swedish)
• Mova 墨瓦. Prometejs. Translated by Māra Poliakova. 2023 (in Latvian)

References

1. "Творческая встреча с Виктором Мартиновичем - белорусским писателем и журналистом" (in Russian). from the original on 2016-09-18. Retrieved 2012-06-24.
2. . 2014-07-19. Archived from the original on 2016-09-27. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
3. "Мартинович Виктор. Витебский авангард (1918-1922): социокультурный контекст и художественная критика" (in Russian). Европейский гуманитарный университет. Archived from the original on 2012-06-16. Retrieved 2012-06-16.
4. Сьмятаньнікаў, Андрэй (2012-01-18). "Названыя 12 лепшых кніг 2011 году" (in Belarusian). Generation.by. Retrieved 2012-06-26.
5. Аксак, Валянціна (2012-03-14). "Найлепшай дэбютнай кнігай – 2011 стала..." Радыё Свабода (in Belarusian). Радио Свобода. from the original on 2012-04-17. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
6. . Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2014-03-27.
7. "ESFS Awards 2014". 2014-08-24.
8. Snyder, Timothy. "In darkest Belarus". The New York Review.
9. Ostrovsky, Arkady. "Romantically Incorrect".
10. "Paranoia. A Novel by Victor Martinovich".
11. Ackermann, Felix. "Der Verleger, der seine eigenen Bücher verbrannte".
12. Henneberg, Nicole. "Viktor Martinowitsch mit "Paranoia": Liebe in der Diktatur".
13. Aksak, Valiancina. "Найлепшай дэбютнай кнігай – 2011 стала..."
14. "Ночь. Виктор Валерьевич Мартинович".
15. "Sponsorship award for the Straelen Translator Prize 2017 for Thomas Weiler".
16. "The Literary Award of the Year in prose was awarded to Sven Kuzmin for the novel "Beauty and Anxiety"".
17. "New Literary Review".
18. "Revolution".
19. "Revolution".
20. "Fabian".
21. У выдавецтве «Кнігазбор» канфіскавалі ўсе асобнікі раману «Рэвалюцыя» Віктара Марціновіча, Радыё Свабода, 4-01-2021
22. Беларуская мытня не прапусціла за мяжу раман Віктара Марціновіча «Рэвалюцыя», Новы час, 5-01-2021