Uladzimir Nyaklyayew: When everything collapsed, one fell in love
– Belarus
Uladzimir Nyaklyayew (Уладзимир Някляеў; * 1946 in Smarhon) is a Belarusian poet and prose writer. He is also involved in politics; he was even a candidate in the Belarusian presidential election in 2010. According to Amnesty International, he was placed under house arrest for participating in post-election protests. He began writing poems in Russian as a member of the literary association around the newspaper Znamya Yunosti (The Sign of Youth). After returning from Moscow in 1972, he started writing exclusively in Belarusian. Since 1978, he has been a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
His first major work was novel Musician, written already in emigration. At its launch on September 21, 2003, he said: “I wanted to write about a man who had to wager everything: fame, money, women… and suddenly everything collapsed. And when everything collapsed, he fell in love. I was interested in how his fate would unfold with this new feeling. The fact that politics is also present in the book is because politics cannot be avoided.” In 2013, Nyaklyayew won the Jerzy Giedroyc Literary Award, an independent yearly award for Belarusian writers, for his novel Soda Fountains with and without Syrup.