The Most Famous

WRITERS from Belarus

This page contains a list of the greatest Belarusian Writers. The pantheon dataset contains 7,302 Writers, 24 of which were born in Belarus. This makes Belarus the birth place of the 44th most number of Writers behind Estonia, and Azerbaijan.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Belarusian Writers of all time. This list of famous Belarusian Writers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Belarusian Writers.

1. Ryszard Kapuściński (1932 - 2007)

With an HPI of 64.86, Ryszard Kapuściński is the most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 46 different languages on wikipedia.

Ryszard Kapuściński (Polish: [ˈrɨʂart kapuˈɕt͡ɕij̃skʲi] ; 4 March 1932 – 23 January 2007) was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country. He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda accorded him the title "Maestro". Notable works include Jeszcze dzień życia (1976; Another Day of Life), about Angola; Cesarz (1978; The Emperor, 1983), about the downfall of Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie, also considered to be a satire of Communist Poland; Wojna futbolowa (1978; The Soccer War, 1991), an account of the 1969 conflict between Honduras and El Salvador, and other stories from the life of the reporter in Africa and Latin America; Szachinszach (1982; Shah of Shahs, 2006) about the downfall of the last Shah of Persia; Imperium (1993) an account of his travels through the collapsing Soviet Union; Heban (1998), later published in English as The Shadow of the Sun (2001), the story of his years in Africa; and Podróże z Herodotem (2004; Travels with Herodotus), in which he ponders over relevance of The Histories by Herodotus to a modern reporter's job.

2. Yanka Kupala (1882 - 1942)

With an HPI of 63.78, Yanka Kupala is the 2nd most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 83 different languages.

Yanka Kupala (Belarusian: Янка Купала; July 7 [O.S. June 25] 1882 – 28 June 1942), was the pen name of Ivan Daminikavich Lutsevich (Іван Дамінікавіч Луцэвіч, Russian: Иван Доминикович Луцевич), a Belarusian poet and writer.

3. Yakub Kolas (1882 - 1956)

With an HPI of 60.91, Yakub Kolas is the 3rd most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 70 different languages.

Yakub Kolas (also Jakub Kołas, Belarusian: Яку́б Ко́лас, November 3 [O.S. October 22] 1882 – August 13, 1956), real name Kanstantsin Mikhailovich Mitskievich (Канстанці́н Міха́йлавіч Міцке́віч, Russian: Константи́н Миха́йлович Мицке́вич, Polish: Konstanty Mickiewicz) was a Belarusian writer, dramatist, poet and translator. People's Poet of the Byelorussian SSR (1926), member (1928) and vice-president (from 1929) of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences. In his works, Yakub Kolas was known for his sympathy towards the ordinary Belarusian peasantry. This was evident in his pen name 'Kolas', meaning 'ear of grain' in Belarusian. He wrote collections of poems Songs of Captivity (Russian: Песни неволи, 1908) and Songs of Grief (Belarusian: Песьні-жальбы, 1910), poems A New Land (Belarusian: Новая зямля, 1923) and Simon the Musician (Belarusian: Сымон-музыка, 1925), stories, and plays. His poem The Fisherman's Hut (Belarusian: Рыбакова хата, 1947) is about the fight after unification of Belarus with the Soviet state. His trilogy At a Crossroads (Russian: На перепутье, 1925) is about the pre-Revolutionary life of the Belarusian peasantry and the democratic intelligentsia. He was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946 and 1949.

4. Mendele Mocher Sforim (1835 - 1917)

With an HPI of 59.14, Mendele Mocher Sforim is the 4th most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Mendele Mocher Sforim (Yiddish: מענדעלע מוכר ספֿרים‎, Hebrew: מנדלי מוכר ספרים; lit. "Mendele the book peddler"; January 2, 1836, Kapyl – December 8, 1917 [N.S.], Odessa), born Sholem Yankev Abramovich (Yiddish: שלום יעקבֿ אַבראַמאָװיטש‎, Russian: Соломон Моисеевич Абрамович, romanized: Solomon Moiseyevich Abramovich) or S. J. Abramowitch, was a Jewish author and one of the founders of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature. His name was variously transliterated as Moykher, Sfarim,Seforim, etc. Mendele was born to a poor Lithuanian Jewish family in Kapyl, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire. His father, Chaim Moyshe Broyde, died shortly after Mendele's bar mitzvah. He studied in yeshiva in Slutsk and Vilna until he was 17; during this time he was a day-boarder under the system of Teg-essen, barely scraping by, and often hungry. Mendele traveled extensively around Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania at the mercy of an abusive beggar named Avreml Khromoy (Russian for "Avreml the Lame"); Avreml would later become the source for the title character of Fishke der Krumer (Fishke the Lame). In 1854, Mendele settled in Kamianets-Podilskyi, where he got to know writer and poet Avrom Ber Gotlober, who helped him to understand secular culture, philosophy, literature, history, Russian and other languages. Mendele's first article, "Letter on Education", appeared in 1857, in the first Hebrew newspaper, Hamagid; his mentor Gotlober submitted Mendele's school paper without Mendele's prior knowledge. In Berdichev, where he lived from 1858 to 1869, he began to publish fiction both in Hebrew and Yiddish. Having offended the local powers with his satire, he left Berdichev to train as a rabbi at the relatively theologically liberal, government-sponsored rabbinical school in Zhitomir, where he lived from 1869 to 1881, and became the head of the traditional school (Talmud Torah) in Odessa in 1881. He lived in Odessa until his death in 1917, except for two years spent in Geneva, where he fled the government-inspired pogroms following the failed revolution of 1905. Mendele initially wrote in Hebrew, coining many words in that language, but ultimately switched to Yiddish in order to expand his audience. Like Sholem Aleichem, he used a pseudonym because of the perception at the time that as a ghetto vernacular, Yiddish was not suited to serious literary work — an idea he did much to dispel. His writing strongly bore the mark of the Haskalah. He is considered by many to be the "grandfather of Yiddish literature", an epithet first accorded to him by Sholem Aleichem, in the dedication to his novel Stempenyu: A Jewish Novel. Mendele's style in both Hebrew and Yiddish has strongly influenced several generations of later writers. While the tradition of journalism in Yiddish had a bit more of a history than in Hebrew, Kol Mevasser, which he supported from the outset and where he published his first Yiddish story, Dos kleyne Mentshele, 'The Little Man', in 1863, is generally seen as the first stable and important Yiddish newspaper. Sol Liptzin writes that in his early Yiddish narratives, Mendele "wanted to be useful to his people rather than gain literary laurels". Two of his early works, the story דאס קליינע מענטשעלע, Dos kleyne mentshele and the unstaged 1869 drama Di Takse (The Tax), condemned the corruption by which religious taxes (in the latter case, specifically the tax on kosher meat) were diverted to benefit community leaders rather than the poor. This satiric tendency continued in Di Klatshe (The Nag, 1873) about a prince, a stand-in for the Jewish people, who is bewitched and becomes a much put-upon beast of burden, but maintains his moral superiority throughout his sufferings (a theme evidently influenced by Apuleius's classical picaresque novel The Golden Ass). His later work became more humane and less satiric, starting with פישקע דער קרומער, Fishke der Krumer (Fishke the Lame; written 1868-1888) – which was adapted as a film of the same title in 1939 (known in English as The Light Ahead) – and continuing with the unfinished The Travels of Benjamin III (מסעות בנימין השלישי, Masoes Benyomin Hashlishi, 1878), something of a Jewish Don Quixote. (The title is a reference to the well-known travel book of the Medieval Spanish-Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela.) In 1938, this work was adapted by Hermann Sinsheimer as a play for the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Germany, and performed there shortly after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), in November of that year. As with Fishke, Mendele worked on and off for decades on his long novel Dos Vinshfingeril (The Wishing Ring, 1865–1889), with at least two versions preceding the final one. It is the story of a maskil — that is, a supporter of the Haskalah, like Mendele himself — who escapes a poor town, survives misery to obtain a secular education much like Mendele's own, but is driven by the pogroms of the 1880s from his dreams of universal brotherhood to one of Jewish nationalism. The first English translation, by Michael Wex (author of Born to Kvetch), was published in 2003. Limdu hetev (Learn to Do Good, 1862-). דאס קליינע מענטשעלע, Dos kleyne mentshele, 1864 drama Di Takse (The Tax, 1869) Di Klatshe (The Nag, 1873) פישקע דער קרומער, Fishke der Krumer (Fishke the Lame; written 1868-1888) Beémek Habakhá ("In the Vale of Tears"): Yiddish title: "Dos vintshfingerl" ("The Wishing Ring", 1865–1889) The Travels of Benjamin III (מסעות בנימין השלישי, Masoes Benyomin Hashlishi, 1878) "The Burned-Out" ("Ha-nisforim, 1896) autobiographical Shloyme Reb Khayims: A bild fun yídishn lebn in der Líte ("Shloyme, son of Reb Khayim: An Image of the Yiddish Life in Lithuania"; never completed; 1899–1912) “BeSeter ra'am” (Hebrew: בסתר רעם, In the Secret Place of Thunder; 1886–1887) “Shem va-Yefet ba-‘agalah” (Shem and Japheth in the Train Compartment; 1890), “Lo naḥat be-Ya‘akov” (There Is No Good in Jacob; 1892), “Bi-Yeme ha-ra‘ash” (In Days of Tumult; 1894) “Bi-Yeshivah shel ma‘alah uvi-yeshivah shel mata” (In the Heavenly Assembly and the Earthly One; 1894–1895) Sol Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6, especially 40-45. Dan Miron, Abramovitsh, Sholem Yankev , YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised. The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, 1996 Aron Gurshtein, Избранные статьи. М.: Советский писатель, 1959.; "Наследие Менделе" ("Mendele's Heritage"): starting from p. 248 Works by or about Mendele Mocher Sforim at Internet Archive Works by Mendele Mocher Sforim at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Mendele Moykher-Sforim at Maison de la culture Yiddish-Bibliothèque Medem. Literature by and about Mendele Mocher Sforim in University Library JCS Frankfurt am Main: Digital Collections Judaica

5. Vasil Bykaŭ (1924 - 2003)

With an HPI of 58.36, Vasil Bykaŭ is the 5th most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 38 different languages.

Vasil Uladzimiravič Bykaŭ (also spelled Vasil Bykov, Belarusian: Васі́ль Уладзі́міравіч Бы́каў, Russian: Василь Влади́мирович Быков; 19 June 1924 – 22 June 2003) was a Belarusian dissident and opposition politician, junior lieutenant, and author of novels and novellas about World War II. A significant figure in Soviet and Belarusian literature and civic thought, his work earned him endorsements for the Nobel Prize nomination from, among others, Nobel Prize laureates Joseph Brodsky and Czesław Miłosz.

6. Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841 - 1910)

With an HPI of 57.53, Eliza Orzeszkowa is the 6th most famous Belarusian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Eliza Orzeszkowa (6 June 1841 – 18 May 1910) was a Polish novelist and a leading writer of the Positivism movement during foreign Partitions of Poland. In 1905, together with Henryk Sienkiewicz, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

7. S. Ansky (1863 - 1920)

With an HPI of 56.16, S. Ansky is the 7th most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

S. An-sky (1863 – November 8, 1920), born Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, was a Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds, written in 1914, and for Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish socialist Bund. In 1917, after the Russian Revolution, he was elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly as a Social-Revolutionary deputy.

8. Oscar Milosz (1877 - 1939)

With an HPI of 55.99, Oscar Milosz is the 8th most famous Belarusian Writer. Her biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (Lithuanian: Oskaras Milašius; Polish: Oskar Władysław Miłosz) (28 May 1877 or 15 May 1877 – 2 March 1939) was a French language poet, playwright, novelist, essayist and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations. His literary career began at the end of the nineteenth century during la Belle Époque and reached its high point in the mid-1920s with the books Ars Magna and Les Arcanes, in which he developed a highly personal and dense Christian cosmogony comparable to that of Dante in The Divine Comedy and John Milton in Paradise Lost. A solitary and unique twentieth-century metaphysician, his poems are visionary and often tormented. He was a distant cousin of Polish writer Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980.

9. Aleksander Chodźko (1804 - 1891)

With an HPI of 55.68, Aleksander Chodźko is the 9th most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Aleksander Borejko Chodźko (30 August 1804 – 27 December 1891) was a Polish poet, Slavist, and Iranologist.

10. Uladzimir Karatkievich (1930 - 1984)

With an HPI of 55.13, Uladzimir Karatkievich is the 10th most famous Belarusian Writer. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Uladzimir Karatkievich (Belarusian: Уладзімір Сямёнавіч Караткевіч; Russian: Владимир Семёнович Короткевич) (26 November 1930 – 25 July 1984) was a Belarusian romantic writer.

People

Pantheon has 27 people classified as Belarusian writers born between 1629 and 1984. Of these 27, 1 (3.70%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Belarusian writers include Evgeny Morozov. The most famous deceased Belarusian writers include Ryszard Kapuściński, Yanka Kupala, and Yakub Kolas. As of April 2024, 3 new Belarusian writers have been added to Pantheon including Bella Rosenfeld, Nahum Goldmann, and Aleksandr Volodin.