Victor Martinovich

    Victor Martinovich is a Belarusan writer, an art historian and an associate professor in European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania). He researches the Vitebsk period of the work of Marc Chagall, as well as artists of the Paris School from Belarus and the Vitebsk avant-garde.

    Currently he is working on a project methodologically linking the study of humanities and fine arts.
    Fiction novels by Victor Martinovich were published in Belarusan, Russian, German, English, Finnish, Swedish and Latvian languages.
    He also writes regularly for several media such as Die Zeit.
    Plays based on Victor’s works have been staged in Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Minsk, Insbruk and St. Peterburg.

    The play based on the novel Revolution is being staged by the Volkstheater of Munich (directed by Philipp Arnold) and at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg (directed by Dušan David Pařízek).

 

Fiction novels

 

 

    Paranoia

    A novel called Paranoia was written in Russian and published in Russia's AST in 2009. In this dystopian story we see the classical love triangle involving a young dissident intellectual, wealthy girl and a high-ranking KGB officer. 

Text has been twice positively reviewed by New York Times Books Review in 2009 and 2013.

    In 2013 North Western university Press published English translation of Paranoia, prepared by Diane Nemec Ignashev, Carleton’s professor of slavistics. In 2014 German translation of Paranoia is published by Voland und Quist and received positive critics in Frankfurter Allgemeine zeitung, Tagesspiegel and German Culture radio.

 

    Cold paradise

    Cold Paradize is a political thriller and literary puzzle at the same time – it tells us 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.

 

    Sphagnum

    Sphagnum, was presented to public 2013 and became best-selling novel in Belarusan 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 its also intellectual “anti-detective” story. 

 

    Mova 墨瓦

    Minsk in the year 2044, 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. Anyone who reads the mova note, hardly understands a word, but experiences a wonderfully euphoric high. 

In 2016 it was published in German in Voland und Quist, 2018 republished by Random’s House BTB.

 

    Lake of Joy

    Young and strong, Yasya 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 filmed by the German director of Belarussian 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 2021.

 

    Revolution

    He, a professor at a private Moscow university; she, a waitress in a bar; for both it is a case of love at first sight. But one day he leaves their apartment near the Moscow television tower never to be seen again. 

    An unknown organization, which knows everything about him, including his financial debts, blackmails him into carrying out small favours. 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. 

 

 

Plays and adaptations

 

In 2014 Victor Martinovich started collaboration with Vienna based theatre Ganymed, founded by Jacqueline Kornmueller and Peter Wolf.

 

In 2015 Victor Martinovich’s  mini play The best place on Earth staged by Ganymed in Kunsthistorisches museum Vienna in the framework of “Ganymed Dreaming” project. 
 

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

 

In 2017 debuted as a playwright in Belarus with a drama Dr. Raus’ Fortune dedicated to a pioneering Slavic publisher Francisk Skaryna. 

 

In 2021 composed a mini play Child with a Child dedicated to “Madonna with child” by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, performed by Ganymed in Saint Peterburg’s Hermitage museum in the framework of the international theater project “Ermitage Flora”.

 

In 2022 Revolution, a play based on Victor Martinovich’s novel debuted in Deutsches Schauspielhaus, the biggest German language drama theatre in the world. Director Dušan David Pařízek.
 

In 2023 a play based on Victor Martinovich’s Revolution debuted at Munich’s Volkstheater. Director Philipp Arnold.

 

In November 2023 a play dedicated to Georg Kestner’s Fabian debuted on the stage of Munich’s Volkstheater. Victor Martinovich was one of the playwrights who contributed to the text.