As Much Freedom as You Can Carry: Confessions of a Belarusian Metalhead

Coming soon.

“The only thing of any value to a human being is freedom.”

Lesley Knife has spent his whole life refusing to go along with things. He dug in his heels in the Soviet schoolyard, in the wild 1990s, and when Belarus slid into dictatorship, answering every new absurdity with one of his own.

This is the story of that refusal: a Soviet childhood of imaginary knights and dinosaur theories; the wild, drunken freedom of the early 1990s, when Belarus became independent and metalheads rode the trains stuffed into luggage racks; the founding of Gods Tower, one of Belarus’s best-known metal bands; a prank coronation as King of Mars to mock a very real one; friends lost along the way; and, at last, a night crossing of the border with one small suitcase.

Deadpan, profane, heartbreaking and very funny, this is the confession of a man who never learned to obey, and never quite grew up.

About the author

Uladzislaŭ Navažylaŭ, better known as Lesley Knife, is a Belarusian musician and writer and a co-founder of the metal band Gods Tower. Forced out of Belarus by political persecution, he now lives in Lithuania.

Also available

Read it in the original Belarusian: Яблык у валізцы.

Previously announced under the working title Out of Place.

• Author: Uladzislaŭ Navažylaŭ (Lesley Knife)
• Translator and editor: Olya Ianovskaia
• Illustrations: Oksana Oxy Gen Gatalskaya
• Original title: Яблык у валізцы (Grunwald Publishing, 2025)
• Edition: First English edition, early 2027
• Formats: Paperback, 5.5 × 8.5 in, 338 pages; EPUB
• ISBN (paperback): 978-1-0693348-4-8
• ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-0693348-9-3
• Publisher: Grunwald Publishing, Canada