In the world of this book, crossing the border requires paying with one's own flesh, and sooner or later a summons to the deadly swamp arrives in the mailbox. But ‘Black Forest’ is not fantasy or dystopia, but a realistic reflection of the world in which Belarusians found themselves after 2020. Horror of a man in uniform, the experience of trauma, the loss of a homeland, fortitude and resistance are placed in classic Belarusian toposes of a swamp, border, village, field, which acquire the ability to act in defiance of those who have declared their power over them.