Background
Janka Bryl was born on August 4, 1917, in Odessa, Ukraine. Five years after, the Bryl family moved back to the village of Zahora in his parents' native Karelichy District of Grodno, Belarus.
Janka Bryl was born on August 4, 1917, in Odessa, Ukraine. Five years after, the Bryl family moved back to the village of Zahora in his parents' native Karelichy District of Grodno, Belarus.
He graduated from the Polish seven-year school in the village Turec, Grodno oblast, Belarus. In 1931, he entered the Navahrudak gymnasium, but could not afford to study there.
Bryl served in the Polish Navy at the beginning of World War II, and he was captured by the Germans in 1939. He escaped in 1941. After October 1942, he was a messenger for a partisan brigade, later becoming a scout for the partisan Komsomolets brigade. He edited the Freedom Flag newspaper and authored various anti-Nazi leaflets. In October 1944, he moved to Minsk where he worked on several newspapers and magazines such as Vozhyk (Hedgehog), Maladosc (Youth), Polymia (Flame) as well as in the State Publishing House. He was a secretary of the BSSR Writers' Union, actively worked to strengthen the ties of the Belarusian literature with other USSR literature. He also worked as chairman of the Belarusian society "USSR - Canada" and was twice elected the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR.
Bryl's first story appeared in 1938 and his first short story collection appeared in 1946 but it is in the post-Stalin era that he has produced his best works, now rightly be regarded as the doyen of Belarusian short story writers. The first collection of stories was called Apaviadanni (Stories). Bryl's books are mostly works of psychological fiction and his characters tend to be sensitive and prone to introspection. They were largely set in Belarusian villages and frequently about the people's fight against the Nazis.
His famous novel “Birds and Nests” (Ptushki I hniozdy) was published in 1963. It is basically a lyrical monologue, recounting the emotional and intellectual development of a young prisoner of war in Germany. In its polyphonic construction, the novel is more ambitious than the stories, successfully synthesizing three different strands of narration in the descriptions of the hero's life as a prisoner, as a guerilla, and as a child in Western Byelorussia.
Bryl was one of the older generations of Soviet writers who had begun their literary careers in Stalin's time but received a new lease on life in the late 1950s along with such contemporaries as Ivan Shamiakin and Ivan Mielezh. He is one of the older generations of writers. Experiences together with impressions of childhood form the thematic basis for most of his elevated, highly lyrical short stories and prose miniatures. Many of Bryl's stories might well be described as poems in prose, but despite their subjective, emotional tone, they are also remarkable for psychological subtlety, lively picturesque language, and appealing humor.
He is also known as a translator of the works of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Ivan Krylov, Bazhov, G.Trayapolski, Dovzhenko, M. Konopnickaja, Y. Ivashkevich, E. Ozheshko, B. Prus and others.