Since 2009, Martinovich has written 6 novels. The novels were written in Belarusian or Russian alternately. Most of the novels have also been translated and published in the US, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Latvia. Martinovich's books received attention and awards from Belarusian and Russian literature societies, among others he received the Encouragement Award of the European Science Fiction Society in 2014.
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. and in the New York Times in 2013 by Arkady Ostrovsky. 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. In 2014, German translation of the book is published by Voland und Quist and received positive reviews in
Frankfurter Allgemeine zeitung, Tagesspiegel, and German Culture radio.
Cold Paradise The second fiction novel by 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 simultaneously. It tells a story of a girl who fled from the country after a long hunt by local secret services. Narration guides the reader through the series of episodes that totally destroy the first impression of what started like a nice love story. In 2012, Martinovich was recognized with the Debut Literary Award named after Maksim Bahdanovich in prose for his novel
Cold Paradise.
Sphagnum His third fiction book,
Sphagnum, was presented to public 2013 in Belarusian (in translation of Vital Ryzhkou) and in Russian. It became a best-selling novel in the 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 is also an intellectual “anti-detective” story.
Mova Martinovich's next novel,
Mova, is a social dystopia written and released in Belarusian in 2014. It was later translated into Russian. 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 note in mova 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 its 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 a 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..."
Revolution 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. In 2021, during the
2020-2021 Belarusian protests, 558 copies of his last book,
Revolution, were confiscated. At the same time, Belarusian customs forbad mailing the book to any other country. == Awarded translations ==