The Zekameron: One hundred tales from behind bars and eyelashes

Zekameron derives from the Russian word zek, an abbreviation formed by the names of two letters of the Cyrillic alphabet; it stands for zakliuchonny, a word that originally referred to a convict held in a Soviet labour camp. The word now has the general sense of ‘prisoner’. The stories found themselves outside the prison walls and were sent directly to Jim Dingley who previously translated two books from Belarus for Scotland Street Press. Dingley immediately sent the manuscript to Scotland ...