The spotlight on Georgia is growing by the year, not least thanks to the authors below, who works have been translated in to English, bringing Georgia out into the world, and giving the curious world something new to explore!
A MAN WAS GOING DOWN THE ROAD
Author: Otar Chiladze
Set in Vani, the semi-legendary capital of Colchis (as western Georgia was called in antiquity), Otar Chiladze’s first novel of 1972 explores the Georgian ramifications of the myth of Jason, the Golden Fleece and Medea, weaving his own inventions with Greek myth and history (Daedalus and Icarus, as well as King Minos play a part in the story, too).
At the same time, the novel explores the very modern predicaments of an idealist who unwittingly destroys his family. The mythical Greek intervention in Colchis is subtly told by Chiladze as an allegory of Russia and the Soviet Union’s subversion and conquest of Georgia.
AVELUM (A Survey of the Current Press and a Few Love Affairs)
Author: Otar Chiladze
Translator: Donald Rayfield
This, Otar Chiladze's fifth novel, is the second to be translated into English. The story of a Georgian writer whose private ‘empire of love’ collapses with the ‘empire of evil’, it was published in 1995, and is the first work in which Chiladze was free of Soviet censorship, living in an independent, albeit chaotic, strife-torn Georgia. He no longer clothes in myth his portrayal of the predicament of a Georgian and an intellectual under alien tyranny, but vents his indignation at the fate of Georgia in a novel which stretches over 33 years, the life of Christ, between the Tbilisi massacres by Soviet special forces of March 1956 and April 1989. This is a deeply personal work (but we must not identify the hero Avelum with his creator, even though Avelum is a novelist whose themes of the Minotaur and Icarus resemble Chiladze’s own). Its plot centers on a love affair between a western girl and a Soviet writer, and on the tragedy of an idealist who damages irreparably every woman he cares for, and, in the end, himself. (The Russian translation of Avelum was refused by every publisher in Moscow, even though Chiladze's other novels were bestsellers there).
ANTONIO AND DAVID
Author: Jemal Karchkhadze
This novel is set in medieval Georgia, and the narrator is an Italian traveler who visits the country together with a group of European missionaries. Antonio and David is a tense drama in which the struggle to save Man’s soul plays out against a strife-ridden background of historical realities and religious discourse. This emotionally charged novel is written with faultless skill and in a strikingly refined language.
JOURNEY TO KARABAKH
Author: Aka Morchiladze
Translator: Elizabeth Heighway
Aka Morchiladze, born in 1966 in Tbilisi, is one of the most respected writers in Georgia. He studied and later taught Georgian history at Tbilisi State University, worked as a sports journalist, and hosted a television show on contemporary literature. He is the author of 20 novels and three books of short stories, from which numerous plays and films have been adapted. He currently lives and works in London.
Journey to Karabakh is a bestseller in Georgia and the basis of two feature films. A book about a drug-purchase gone wrong, and about feeling free within the depths of confinement.
ADIBAS
Author: Zaza Burchuladze
Translator: Guram Sanikidze
War is raging in Georgia, Russian fighter planes are thundering overhead, and yet, for some, the falling bombs cause no more impact than the slight ripple moving through the purified water of their swimming pools, or the rattling of a spoon in their cappuccino cups. Filtered through the bleary and cynical mind of Shako- a journalist famed for his appearance in Georgian Pepsi ads-"Adibas" is a tragic satire describing the progressive falsification of his life, invaded by consumer goods, consumer sex, consumer carnage: Adibas is a "war novel" without a single battle scene. Zaza Burchuladze's English-language debut anatomizes the Western world's ongoing "feast at the time of plague."
FLIGHT FROM THE USSR
Author: Dato Turashvili
Flight from the USSR, the first novel from one of Georgia’s most famous authors, Dato Turashvili, was originally published in Georgia in 1988. Since then, it has been adapted as a stage play entitled “Jeans Generation” and translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Greek and Croatian; receiving brilliant reviews everywhere. The novel is based upon an electrifying and tragic event in 1983. Gega Kobakhidze, a young actor, and seven friends hijack an airplane heading from Tbilisi to Leningrad. They desperately want to flee from the USSR and go to Turkey. They fail, are imprisoned and a number are killed. All of Georgia and the world were caught up in these events. Turashvili is a master of drama, with a precise and compelling sense of dialogue; his characterizations are complex but powerful, his story-line is totally engrossing, and we do not want to believe the inevitable and disastrous conclusion. He weaves a gripping literary work between historical fact and fiction, leaving the reader transfixed.
DAGNY, OR A LOVE FEAST
Author: Zurab Karumidze
Dagny, or a Love Feast is a novel written in English by the Georgian author Zurab Karumidze. It was first published in Tbilisi in 2011 and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2013. It was published again in 2014 in the United States.
The novel revolves around the real life story of Dagny Juel, a Norwegian writer best known for her romantic liaisons with a number of artistic figures of fin-de-siècle Europe, such as Edvard Munch. Murdered during a journey to Tbilisi in 1901, Juel's tragically short bohemian life is magnified by Karumidze's narrative explorations of fin-de-siècle mysticism and eroticism through such figures as Gurdjieff.