Yakub Kolas (a pen-name, Kanstantsin Mitskievich by birth-name, the son of Mikhal Mitskievich and Hanna Losik; 1882–1956) – is one of the founders of the Belarusian Literature of the 20th century, the author of the poem The New Land (1911–1923), the third national poetic masterpiece in the Slavic world after Pan Tadeush by Adam Mitskievich and Evgeni Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. Yakub Kolas is the author of the trilogy At the Crossroads, the narratives The Quag, Life's Tales, etc.

It is interesting to know that simultaneously with the work at The New Land started in Miensk prison in March 1911, Yakub Kolas began another great literary masterpiece – the poem Symon the Musician where he touched upon the phenomenon of the art-formation from folklore sources.

The poem The New Land (about 11000 lines long) – is the chronicle of a large rural family, the head of which is the prince RadzivnTs forester. "I think that slavic nations will read this poem with interest. This poem is the main creation in my whole poetic life" – is an expression of the author of "The New Land" (1911–1923), very self-demanding and extremely humble in self-estimating. It signifies that Jakub Kolas realized the scale of this piece of literature, its cultural value and organic correlation with prominent epic janres of the neighbouring literatures.

The translation into Russian was made in 1934–1949 by S.Gorodetskiy, M.Isakovskiy, Y.Mozolkov, P.Rodimov, P.Semynin.

In 1991–2001 Czeslaw Seniuch translated the poem into Polish.

It was translated into ukranian during 2003–2005 by Valery Strilko.

The preface A new life of "The New Land" by Anatol Viartsinski.

Yazep Yanushkievich written afterword entitled "Rhapsody of Belarusian Land" and composed comments.