Fiction from Georgia
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Spanning fifty years, but with a particular emphasis on post-independence fiction, this collection features a diverse range of styles and voices, offering a window onto a vibrant literary scene that has been largely inaccessible to the English-language reader until now. With stories addressing subjects as diverse as blood feuds, betrayal, sex, drugs, and Sergio Leone, it promises to challenge any existing preconceptions the reader might hold, and make available a rich and varied literary tradition unjustly overshadowed by the other ex-Soviet republics, until now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sampler of 19 short stories from the eastern European nation of Georgia, readers are treated to a wide variety of fiction: short and long, realist and surreal, traditional and experimental. In the opening story, "Debi," a young boy grapples with the sexual entreaties of his pubescent sister who is stricken with cancer. In the domestic drama, "Real Beings," a man on vacation with his family flirts with having an affair with his wife's friend at the same time that his wife considers committing suicide. The moving "Love in a Prison Cell" takes place in a transit camp for prisoners on their way to the gulag, where a younger man and an older woman exchange letters through the underground post office, and gradually fall in love. In the most unusual story, "Once Upon a Time in Georgia," a man contemplates life in his pre-Perestroika country through the lens of Sergio Leone's filmic masterpiece, 1984's Once Upon a Time in America. And the penultimate story, "November Rain," is a mini-epic about a teacher and political prisoner whose life before and after the Soviet Invasion of 1921 mirrors the tidal pull of history. In the end, this collection which spans 50 years and is firmly grounded in Georgia's past and culture resonates with universal human concerns and hopes.
