'It's a terse account of painful experience, prison, bewilderment; hugely atmospheric and extremely funny - full of dry wit and small biting observations.' - Anna Vaught

'Maxim Znak's message is that wry humour and humanity trump the cruel absurdities of the regime (...) These stories, one hundred of them, none longer than three pages, have echoes of early Chekhov, Zoshchenko and Samuel Beckett' - Michael Purs

The 100 tales in Zekameron are based on the 14th Century Decameron, but Znak is closer to Beckett than to Boccaccio. Banality and brutality vie with the human ability to overcome oppression. Znak's stories in different voices chart 100 days in prison in Belarus today. The tone is laconic, ironic; the humour dry. The stories bear witness to resistance and self-assertion and the genuine warmth and appreciation of fellow prisoners.

Born in 1981, Maxim Znak is an international lawyer from Belarus who, after the presidential election of August 2020, gathered hard evidence of the violations of the electoral process and sought to take legal action by ensuring that the election results were reviewed by an independent body. Maxim Znak was arrested on 9 September 2020 and held in Remand Prison no. 1 in Minsk until 26 December 2021. This prison has the shocking reputation of being the only one in Europe where the death penalty is still being carried out. It was here that Znak wrote his stories.
In December 2025, Znak was released along with a hundred other political prisoners and deported to Ukraine.