Leo Vardiashvili's debut novel, Hard By a Great Forest, is a tour de force, drawing on his own experience of fleeing Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union to tell a beautiful, painful story of family, identity, loss and hope.

When Saba was eight years old, he left his homeland of Georgia for good. Ripped apart by civil war in the aftermath of gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Georgia in the early 1990s was a maelstrom of poverty, violence and death, while 'the West' promised a glittering capitalist future. Saba and his older brother Sandro finish their growing up in Tottenham, London, their father Irakli working himself to the bone to feed and clothe them, and to scrabble together the money to bring the boys' mother, Eka, who was left behind when they fled Georgia, to England.

Eighteen years later, Saba finds himself drawn back to the country he left as a child after first Irakli and then Sandro vanishes in their hometown of Tbilisi. Once there, he must confront the ghosts of the people he once knew, and grapple with his discombobulation at being thrust back into a place which has changed so much, and whose streets echo with memories of a childhood cut short by the outbreak of war, all while following the trail of breadcrumbs which Sandro has left for him, accompanied by his unlikely accomplice Nodar, a struggling taxi driver who carries his own scars from the war.

Vardiashvili's portrayal of 2010s' Tbilisi is both fond and merciless. He boldly calls out police corruption (and the controversial attempt by the Georgian government to make the police seem more transparent by literally putting them in glass houses), and highlights the jarring juxtaposition of chain stores, smart phones and soft drinks with a bleak, anachronistic 'Sovietness' that the country has still not been able to shake thirty years after independence. However, he also describes the harsh beauty of the looming mountains which surround the city, the chaotic perfection of neighbourhoods of pastel-coloured houses built into the mountainside and haphazardly expanded as the city's population swelled, and his affection for the Georgian people pervades the whole book.

Vardiashvili tells of how the civil war forced the Georgians to become tough and fierce to survive in the face of food shortages and gas, electricity and water being cut off during the heart of winter, but he also takes every opportunity to demonstrate their kindness, loyalty and hospitality - both in small moments such as leaping into traffic to rescue a stranded fox and in more significant plot points, like Nodar's determination to help Saba, and his genuine sadness at having to accept his money in exchange. Like the Mother of Georgia statue which guards Tbilisi from the hillside, Georgians contain multitudes - ready with a cup of wine for friends and a sword for enemies. The author is at pains to make sure the reader understands that, far from being an indistinguishable part of a homogenous Soviet whole, Georgia is a proud and unique nation.

Vardiashvili does a brilliant job of establishing difficult but meaningful relationships between Saba and his assorted family members - including a host of characters who only appear as ghosts, or whom are largely physically absent for the duration of the plot. Through Saba's memories, and the inscrutable-to-anyone else trail through Tbilisi Sandro leaves for his brother, we get a real sense of their closeness as children, and of the unique bond they share because of their situation. Nodar in particular is beautifully written with warmth and humour, but even the most minor characters are thoughtfully, deliberately rendered.

One of the overarching themes of the narrative is the search for the slippery concept of identity: Saba has spent his life struggling to carve a space for himself in London, yet he cannot slot seamlessly back into Tbilisi either; likewise Georgia is torn between loyalty to traditional ways of life and the urge to develop in order to keep pace with Western Europe. Saba had been told that life in England would provide freedom and opportunities, but was confronted by poverty and loneliness; this is mirrored in how the Georgians dreamed of self-determination and freedom from the Soviet yoke, but were unprepared for the harsh realities of self-determination, which included food shortages and utilities being turned off.

Hard by A Great Forest offers an absorbing insight into Georgian history, telling of how Tbilisi's position on the most direct route between Europe and Asia has caused it to endure hundreds of years of invasions by marauding despots hoping to expand their empires by force, and how this hardened the Georgians. I was utterly captivated by the stories of last stands and desperate retreats into the mountains carrying books, poetry and vineyard cuttings in an effort to preserve 'what makes a Georgian Georgian'. Vardiashvili also deftly summarises a complex political landscape and makes it real for a reader who has never experienced anything like the dissolution of the USSR.

Vardiashvili boldly carves out lulls in the fast-paced scavenger hunt of a plot, which are filled with multiple scenes devoted to detailed descriptions of Georgian hospitality rituals, and to expositing about the Ossetian wine making tradition, but none of it feels indulgent or superfluous. Instead, these interludes simply make the novel feel richer - they fill in the broader story which we need to understand for the narrative to truly resonate. He makes deliberate choices - such as making Nodar's character Ossetian rather than Georgian and the inclusion of the mountain community of Ushguli - in order to build a layered, complex and realistic world, and the detail and specificity of his descriptions makes the reader feel that they are right there in it.

Literary allusions abound throughout - from Hansel and Gretel to the Slavic witch Baba Yaga - and Saba's quest to find his father puts in mind the tradition of epic adventure stories, as we seem him evade pursuing villains and wild animals, all whilst navigating a treacherous and inhospitable landscape. For this reason, we might forgive Vardiashvili for deploying a little artistic licence in service of the form of his story: the great flood which saw Tbilisi overrun with escaped zoo animals did happen, but not until five years after Saba's 2010 visit, and, in keeping with age-old story-telling tradition, the details have been exaggerated for dramatic effect.

This is an incredible book - easily the best I have read this year - and I feel truly privileged to have had the opportunity to read and review an ARC of it thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury.

Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In his debut novel, Vardiashvili presents a close-to-home, realistic depiction of a country at war, the challenges faced by the civilians caught in the middle, and the camaraderie, kinship and love found among victims of catastrophe. Characters search for lost family members on an epic journey through a land scarred with the bitterness of rivalry, and face ever increasing threats from predatory beasts, the unforgiving wilderness and the depravity of humanity.

Fans of Andrey Kurkov's Grey Bees will find much to appreciate here, where reality and fable weave seamlessly together, to demonstrate how one can endure the horrors of the present day by finding escape in the comforts of the mind.

The setting of war-torn Georgia is laid bare before the reader. Each scene acutely detailed transports us to the grim, uncomfortable truths of how one copes in a country living with unresolved conflict.
The events, at times brutally visceral and at others seemingly supernatural, are deftly painted with the brushstrokes of memory, as what are surely lived experiences are carefully portrayed in full hue throughout.
The characters are clearly drawn and fleshed out with motivations that drive the narrative to its profoundly moving conclusion. "Fairy tales have to be read to the end."

The book is narrated by Saba, who fled war-torn Georgia with his brother Sandro and father Irakli in the early 90’s. It’s heartbreaking as they are forced to leave their mother behind and Irakli tries unsuccessfully for many years to bring her to England where they now live.
After her death, Irakli decides to return to Georgia, only to disappear. When Sandro follows him and also disappears. Saba has no choices but to return to his birthplace to look for them both.
On arrival, his passport is confiscated and he is warned he is not welcome. Help is at hand when he is picked up by a taxi driver named Nodar, but not all is as it seems.
Sandro has left a series of clues to help Saba find them and as he tries to solve them he is haunted by voices of family and friends from his past.
Although there were lighter moments, I found the book very sad, sometimes brutal, as it deals with the effects of war, loss and family secrets.
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review

Hard by a Great Forest
by Leo Vardiashvili

Until this month I have never read anything set in Georgia, and having just finished the epic saga The Eighth Life, I was hungry for more about the Georgian people, their tremendous sense of humour, their zest for life, their lively intelligence and their inherent gusto for hospitality, "a guest is a gift from god".

What a thrill to have that wish granted within days of wishing it because little did I know what I was in for when I cracked open this second helping, which brings me up to date with this unique and fascinating culture, steeped in folklore and proudly clinging to it's identity throughout centuries of invasion, annexation and secession.

This story grabbed me from the first page with it's highly distinctive narrative voice. The title instantly conjures the tone with the opening words of Hansel and Gretel. We are off on a trail, beset by dangers, follow the breadcrumbs....

With themes of war and displacement, the identity of the returned emigré, family connection and community, this is a wild goose chase, wrapped in a caper that will make you laugh hysterically while punching you in the gut. I'm confident to recommend this to readers of any genre. It has something for everyone.

Publication date: 30th January 2024
Thanks to #NetGalley and #bloomsburyuk for the ARC

I was interested to read this book as I am trying to read a book from every country in the world. Hard By a Great Forest perfectly fitted my requirements, I have learned a lot about Georgia and it’s history. More than that I have also discovered a fantastic new author who writes beautifully.

“A man without history is a tree with no roots”.
I won’t go into detail about the plot as it is outlined well in the blurb. For me the book was essentially Saba (the main character, who left Georgia with his brother Sandro and their father Irakli during the war) returning home to find answers, wrestling with his identity, survivor’s guilt and eventually putting the ghosts of his past to rest.

“Tblisi is a city that was invaded, levelled, and rebuilt over thirty times. Over the centuries, all manner of empires and their unhinged rulers had their way with the city”.
The book has so much to it that it could’ve been contradictory, but the author balanced all the elements so well that it merely highlighted the complexities of a nation that has been though so much and has adapted to survive.

Thanks to the author, Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an ARC in return for an honest review.


“…the Georgian people developed a standing strategy. Each time the city was threatened, the people escaped into the mountains…Comforts, provisions and lives were sacrificed to rescue that which can’t be replaced – things to be preserved no matter the price. Our history…”
When Saba returns to Tblisi to find his brother and father he is helped by a taxi driver called Nodar. Like Saba and his family Nodar has done terrible things that he admits he would do again if needed. The actions of many of the characters in the book at first seem horrendous but the author writes the characters and their stories so well that you can understand why they did these things and have sympathy and compassion for them.

“Through this miracle of spilled blood and intimacy with death, Tblisi still stands today…”
Even though the book has many dark themes I never felt overwhelmed as it was punctuated with many surreal / fairytale elements e.g. the escaped hippopotamus which destroys a Swatch shop or the crazy radio phone ins and my favourite character Nodor’s commentary on the country and its history. “our president’s cod-shit crazy” “A snake in a box is still a snake – a westernized snake” “ since Gorbachev sat farting into Stalin’s armchair”

For me, even though the ending wasn’t tied up in a neat bow, I felt that it fitted the tone of the book well. Afterall when does real life ever end up perfectly for all. Sometimes we must let people or places go.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to find out more about Georgia, or something a little different with complex multi-layered characters.

An amazing debut novel.
Set in Georgia, it tells the story of Saba, who fled the civil war in Georgia as a young boy with his father and brother, finding refuge in London.
His mother was forced to stay behind and this has haunted him - “our mother stayed so we could escape. See war trumps most things. That’s how we became motherless”
When his father returns to Georgia and the phone calls stop and he appears to have gone missing, Saba and his brother return to their homeland to find and bring their father home.
It’s exquisitely written, interwoven with tales of Georgian folklore and with so many wars going on nationally so, so relevant.
It shows the destruction and devastation war can have on families, ripping them apart.
It’s sad yet hopeful and has alot to do with identity, being able to give up everything to save a loved one - “my boys, I did something I can’t undo …. Maybe in the mountains I’ll be safe. I left a trail I can’t erase. Do not follow it. I love you best I can”
It blends so many genres, it’s a hybrid of thriller, fairy tale and coming of age with gorgeous of depictions of Georgia’s landscape and culture, showing the resilience of the people.
Saba will discover that all roads lead back to the past and to secrets swallowed up in the great forests of Georgia.
“A man without history is a tree without roots”
Thanks #leovardiashvil @bloomsburypublishing & @netgalley for an amazing read

"Irakli wrote Kaleidoskupi in the monastery where he took himself after he and Eka divorced. He even brought the dog‑eared handwritten manuscript with him to London. Kept it hidden away in a box, like it was cursed.

“I’ll go back there, to all those places I didn’t say goodbye to,” he’d tell us, before each abortive attempt to fly to Tbilisi. “I’ll leave the pages, here and there, like breadcrumbs. Right pages for the right place. My farewell. When I’m done, the breadcrumbs will bring me back here. Back to you.”

"Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Grethel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread."

from Hansel and Gretel, translated by Margaret Hunt, from Hänsel und Gretel by die Brüder Grimm

The first-person narrator, Saba Sulidze-Donauri, of Hard by a Great Forest is in his late 20s. His father Irakli fled Georgia in 1992 during the early part of the Georgian Civil War, taking Saba and his older brother Sandro with him and ending up in England, but being forced to leave the boy's mother, Eka behind. Saba has made a reluctant career as a non terribly convinced or convincing (you're going to die so buy a pension??) peddler of financial services snake-oil and fairy tales:

"My job was to travel the country and give people bad news. In corporate, air‑conditioned meeting rooms, I told my audiences that some‑ day they would die. Yes, you in the back—you too. A Doomsday Peddler, according to Sandro. Like a good snake‑oil man, though, I had miracle cures to sell. I offered pensions and life insurance, investments and savings accounts. Useless acronyms, yield rates and percentages, sold to profit my em‑ployer. But also sold to stop these people from really absorbing my message and walking out of their jobs."

Saba has now returned to the country in 2010, or so he tells us, is search of Sandro, who disappered after he in turn went in search of Irakli, who in turn disappeared after he had returned to the country to seek closure, after Eka's death. Although the Tbilisi he arrives to seems like a Life of Pi come to life, with dangerous zoo animals roaming the street, which places us in June 2015 and the aftermath of the flood.

With no real plans on arrival, Saba finds his Sancho Panza in a taxi driver, Nodar, and the two travel around the city, and then the wider country in search of the trail of breadcrumbs left behind by Sandro and Irakli. The two are pursued by a policeman who is seeking Irakli for attempted murder and Sandro for adding and abetting his escape. And Saba is guided not only by the treasure-hunt clues left by Sandro, but also by voices in his head of those he has lost or left behind (the 'would have said' construction here soon replaced in Saba's mind with 'said').

"In those early days, before we got shunted into a Tottenham school that spoke a language we didn’t, Sandro and I entertained ourselves by building elaborate scavenger hunts in our little council flat. Small scrolls of paper hidden in unlikely places, messages and clues written in our own secret language. Sandro’s hunts were always more intricate than mine. They baffled me so often. But Sandro’s no cheat. His game was always fair. He knew I’d solve the riddles eventually because we shared a vocabulary. Just think, he’d say and grin. Think. But I rarely finished Sandro’s games before Irakli came home, an exhausted interloper in our world. So, this is the beginning of a Sandro scavenger hunt. The signal to tell me the game has started. This one’s going to be hard. But you can do it, Saba, he would have said."

The somewhat fantastical set-up, with its link to Hansel and Gretel, reminded me of Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread. But that novel, for all its wonderful creativity, suffered because its lack of internal logic rather removed any narrative tension or interest in the characters.

But Hard by a Great Forest is very different. Of course one key lesson of Hansel and Gretel is that it is impossible to follow a trail of breadcrumbs and actually the pages of Irakli's play Kaleidoskupi and the clues from Sandro are, in practice, Macguffins. The real story is Saba travelling around his former hometown, visiting places, and where still alive, people that were meaningful to him, but also discovering the ongoing effects of the conflicts in the country, in South Ossetia in particular.

And although Saba narrates the novel, the author does this in a way that enables the reader to see his flaws - how the voices he hears are largely wish-fulfillment and his lack of empathy with others he sees as having betrayed him (the policeman searching for his father, and Surik his mother's neighbour and the one survivor from those he remembers).

Perhaps the highest praise I could give this is that I hope the author's agent has commissioned a Korean translation and sent the script to producers there, as this would make a fabulous K-drama, a genre which as Oyeyemi has observed shares many characteristics with the tales of the Brothers Grimm:

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a corker of a read – quirky events and humour (which I love) fill every page with splendid surprises. I laughed at plenty and was affected by the pathos, the grief of an invaded and broken country, and the marvellous humanity throughout this extraordinary adventure, interwoven with compassion, cruelty, culture and man’s ability to demonstrate compassion when fighting to survive. The characters are unforgettable and the protagonist’s return to his home country is complemented with legacy, folklore, fairytales and family.
I shall read this again - and look forward to more from Leo Vardiashivili.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book courtesy of an ARC from the publishers, in return for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book with no obligation to review.

I understand that it can be considered a good thing for the author if their book provokes strong reactions in readers, even negative reactions,

I see that a lot of people like this book. I am not one of them. ,I did not enjoy this book at all and nearly gave up on a number of occasions. I am actually sorry that I continued reading. This is a very dispiriting book where absolutely nothing good happens. It is all miserable, depressing and horrible things piled one on the other. Sometimes grim books can be thought provoking or moving but I didnt really engage with Saba or anyone of the characters so ...

Apart from the difficulties encountered by Saba himself in his quest, we face bureaucratic corruption, police cruelty, horrible things happening to animals, people live in abject poverty and desperation, violence, betrayal., people with PTSD. You name it, it's probably there.

It is appalling to think that in 21st century Europe, people are having to live like the Georgian in this book do. I also read recently that there seems to have been a dreadful recent practice in Georgia of women being told their new born babies have died but the children being stolen and sold to other couples. So the misery continues. Life must have been better in Soviet times, freedom is an illusion anyway and in Soviet times you had a job, a roof over your head and at least something to eat.

I found the voices speaking to Saba to be very annoying as I did not know who they were. It was sad about Eka but neither Irakli, Sandro or Saba stopped to wonder if perhaps Eka was happy with Surik. There are references throughout to fairytales but their significance escaped me.

Even the ending is depressing. I see no hope anywhere.

I enjoyed this book a lot less than others to which I have given 3 stars but I will go for 3 anyway on the strength of the writing.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book and offer an honest review.
As boys, Sandro and Saba flee war torn Georgia with their father Irakli. Their mother, Eka, doesn’t have a passport, so she stays behind while her sons go to the safety of London, a strange city that they eventually call home.
For years, Urakli works multiple jobs to provide for his sons. What’s left, he sends back to Eka. He’d promised to get her out too, but it never happened and after twenty years, racked by guilt, Irakli returns to Georgia in search of what he has left behind. When contact is lost, Sandro, the elder of the brother’s also returned to Georgia to find their father. When the same thing happens and Sandro also disappears, Saba does the only thing he can do and returns to Georgia, too.
Alone in a country that is now strange to him, Nodar, a taxi driver, takes him in hand. Originally from Ossetia, Nodar is now living a half life in Tbilisi with his wife Ketina. When Nodar and Ketina fled the bombing in Ossetia, they were forced to leave their daughter behind. She had been caught up in the shelling and while logic says that she is most probably dead, Nodar hangs on to a hope that his daughter somehow managed to survive and they will one day be reunited. He has tried to get back to Ossetia many times only to be turned back, but he keeps trying.
This is the story of Saba and Nodar’s searches for the family that they have lost. Will either of them find who they are looking for? In the madness that is modern day Georgia, nothing is certain.
The characters are will rounded, and completely believable. It is told from Saba’s point of view and he is so real and vibrant on the page that when he spoke; I heard his accent. The same with Nodar and Ketina, I could see them in their modest home.
To give fair warning, parts of this book are very dark but they are necessary to the plot. A great debut and I look forward to seeing what the author writes next.

A real mixture of a book - part fairy tale, part mystery thriller as well as a ghost and war story. There is a lot going on and sometimes I really did have to work at reading it - it is a book that demands your full concentration. However it does reward your efforts with a vast range of emotions from the heartbreak of loss to the joy of rediscovery.
I do feel exhausted having just finished it but I feel that I will be thinking about the characters and Georgia for a long time.

Powerful and moving. A lot of books fill this category, but few are as well written. This book holds more truth than any non fiction narrative ever could ("Fiction is one of the best ways to find truth" Amy Tan) And it is the truth in this novel that gives it its power and enables it to move you. I could not read this book in one go and found I had to keep coming up for air with something light and entertaining, but I kept being drawn back into this compelling heartbreaking tale.

I was drawn by this tale from the first page. Saba sets the scene succinctly in the first chapter - how he, his brother, Sandro, and his father, Irakli escapaed war-torn Tbilisi. How their mother stayed behind because there was not enough money for them all to escape.
Then when a young man Irakli returns to Tbilisi, having not dared for so many years. He keeps in touch until a final email he sends and then disappears. Sandro returns to Tbilisi to search for him ... and disappears. Finally, Saba follows and so begins his hunt to find his father and his brother. He meets Nodar, a taxi driver, at the airport and from then Nodar houses him, drives him around and becomes his constant companion.
Saba is nervous and his head is full of people from the past who talk to him - lead him into danger, encourage him and support him, all fighting to fill his head with their thoughts.
We experience the devastation that has been left in Georgia and Ossetia through Saba's eyes and the history of their country. Heart-wrenching and yet throughout the story there is so much humour which lightens the sadness.
Loss and hope for the future bring this story to an end and Saba matures and changes.
I will look for more by this author in the future.
Many thanks to Netgalley/Leo Vardiashvili/Bloomsbury Publishing for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

This book appeared in my life when I was in Georgia, looking for more books about Georgia available in English. Initially, I was drawn in by the mystery of Irakli's disappearance, but I stayed for the vivid descriptions of Georgia - which transported me back to the streets I'd fallen for whilst travelling - and the humour and tenderness which infuses what is at once a bleak but also hopeful story. For me, Nodar and his story totally stole the show.

This book featured in the 2024 version of the influential and frequently literary-prize-prescient annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature.

I found this a very refreshingly different and impactful debut and one I would not be surprised to see featuring on some prize lists of its own this year.

The novel is narrated in first person by Saba Sulidze-Donauri, who shares some biographical details with the author – a refugee from the civil wars which racked post-Soviet Georgia he came to England as a young child, settling with his family in Tottenham.

In the case of Saba – he became a refugee in the UK in 1992 at the age of 10, and moved across with his two-year-older brother Sandro and his divorced and for many years estranged father Irakli. Crucially however without his mother Eka: her lack of a passport and an overall lack of funds to pay the bribes necessary to leave a Tblisi being destroyed by shells around them, meant she could not make the initial trip with instead Irakli returning to the family fold to smuggle the children to safety.

Despite Irakli’s attempts to raise funds in the UK by various manual jobs, and not aided by a swindler who promised to smuggle the case to Georgia, they failed to get Eka out for six years until eventually they heard that she died (like pretty well all their other friends and relatives in Georgia over the subsequent ten years) with Irakli sinking into despondency and Eka (and Georgia) no longer something the family talk about.

At the book’s start, some 17 years after the family moved to the UK, Irakli has finally decided to return to Georgia to get some form of closure. He then though proceeds to go missing, leaving only enigmatic messages about escaping to the mountains from “those people” and asking the boys not to follow him. Sandro ignores this decides to go to Georgia himself, but encounters an obstructive detective, and then he too goes out of contact leaving an enigmatic message (in his case saying he has found Irakli’s breadcrumb trail).

And now – Saba decides he has no choice but to follow the two of them – and almost the whole of the book (other than the introductory pages) sets out what happens to him there as he attempts to follow the breadcrumbs himself.

I must admit I was wrong-footed by the novel’s opening and I think cleverly so on the author’s behalf:

The copious fairy tale references (particularly Hansel and Gretel which works as something of a key theme for the novel);

The rather Kafkaesque treatment Saba gets from the authorities when he arrives at the airport with he (and by immediate association his father and brother) suspected/accused of an unclear crime or action;

Saba’s admission that much of his life has been governed by the imagined voices of many of those he left behind in Georgia: Eka, his “spartan Grandma” Lena, his “superhero Uncle” Anzor, his drunkard neighbor and close friend of the deserted-by-Irakli Eka Surik and a childhood friend and “keeper of my darkest secret” Nino.

And most of all an incident en route to the City - in the cab of a soviet-era-taxi driver – Nodar – who touts for his business at the airport – when they go past a hippopotamus destroying a Swatch shop …

… all of these, added to of course by the Novel’s Eastern European setting had me thinking of the surreal political writing of the Booker longslisted Andrey Kurkov, or even the fantastical literary writing of Helen Oyeyemi.

But this is a much darker, much more politically real and engaged novel than either of those two writers – and I should have paid more attention to the fourth paragraph of the novel “See, war trumps most things” and googled to realise that the hippo incident is simply an attested true one after a flood hit the zoo.

And in some ways my rapid journey towards understanding the seriousness of the book is matched by Saba’s.

Already wrongfooted by his reception at the airport, he then finds out that Nodar is himself a refugee – from the war torn and disputed province of South Ossetia (something which brings home the reality of the violence in Georgia, particularly when Nodar reveals that he and his wife left his young daughter behind fate unknown) and this is followed by the realisation that his passport has been confiscated and that the police (in the shape of a detective who seems to take a personal interest in his case) have a warrant out for the arrest of Irakli on “suspicion of attempted murder” and will arrest Saba for obstruction of justice if he does not share anything he finds or attempts to leave the City (a warning the police claim Sandro ignored).

From there, and with the help of Nodar, Saba decides to ignore the police “advice” and search for his brother and father – finding as he goes to various locations cryptic clues to the next location left for him by Sandro (which draw on shared references from their childhood and a game the two played when first in England – when they were largely linguistically adrift as refugees and instead developed their own secret language) together with scattered scenes from a play that Irakli wrote “Kaleidoskupi” (scenes which are included in the novel)

Of this we learn ..........

"[Sandro – reading it as a teenager] …. told me the play was about a man by the name of Valiko, drinking himself into a stupor in a café in Tbilisi. Valiko is visited, one by one, by people he knows: his mother, an old friend, his ex wife and, so on. By the end, Sandro told me, it turns out no one’s actually visited Valiko at all. Those people were just hallucinations, as he drank himself into the grave. I don’t know if either of us understood what that meant back then, not really. But I do know that Kaleidoskupi gave birth to the myth of Valiko .... Irakli wrote Kaleidoskupi in the monastery where he took himself after he and Eka divorced. He even brought the dog eared handwritten manuscript with him to London. Kept it hidden away in a box, like it was cursed. “I’ll go back there, to all those places I didn’t say goodbye to,” he’d tell us, before each abortive attempt to fly to Tbilisi. “I’ll leave the pages, here and there, like breadcrumbs. Right pages for the right place. My farewell. When I’m done, the breadcrumbs will bring me back here. Back to you.”

As an aside the reader (but not it seems Saba) of course notes that Valiko’s hallucinations very much match Saba’s own chorus of accompanying voices – some encouraging, some reassuring but some like Nino threatening).

For some of the novel it can again seem to revert to the opening quirkiness – the clues relying on shared memories of Shakespeare quotes or the Wizard of Oz anomalies (in the film compared to the novel version the Eka read to the boys) and taking Saba and Nodar on something of a convoluted treck which can at times feel like an tour for the reader of post-war Tblisi.

But the threat of danger and menace is ever present as Saba: finds out why the police are after Nodar, comes to terms again with why he remains haunted by Nino, is told why the detective is obsessed with the case, then something of what has happened to his brother ……… before then taking a decidedly very much darker turn as Saba and Nodar realise that the crumbs lead to South Ossetia.

Certain phrases acts as something of a liefmotif during the book – often spoken by the voices as well as the characters. Initially ““If the mountain does not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain” inspires some of the search; “A guest is a gift from God” recurs throughout the novel, “You can’t work out of the world” becomes more important as Saba and Nodar walk into danger and difficulties as they cross the Ossetian border

And throughout is the idea that “Fairy tales have to be read to the end”

And this fairy-tale infused, tale of refugees and the aftermath of civil war, is one novel you will be glad you read to the end – distinctive in its blend of imagination and intelligent analysis, and a memorable literary insight into an often forgotten conflict at the very heard of Eurasia – and with an ambiguous but moving ending.

Highly recommended.

This is an intense and compulsively readable debut novel, going deep into the dark woods of fairy tale and finding the horror of war. Following Saba on the trail of his father and brother through Georgia, he experiences police corruption, the revisiting of his childhood, the resurgence of the long dead voices of his family and friends and finds help in a well drawn taxi driver. The book is a propulsive rush of intermittently funny and horrific incident, building a genuine emotional connection with the central characters. I gasped out loud more than once…

Fantastic debut

It may only be January, but I’m tipping this stunningly accomplished novel as one of the best debuts of the year. Dripping with a surreal blend of lyrical prose, fairytales and folklore, conversations with ghosts, and the brutal legacy of civil war, it’s a haunting, sometimes dark, often comic read. The kind of book that casts a spell and holds you bewitched from the very first page.

It tells the story of Saba, a Georgian immigrant in London, who goes back to his homeland to track down his father and brother, both of whom have disappeared. Arriving in Tbilisi, Saba discovers he’s not the only one searching for his family. The police are after them too.

What follows, as Saba revisits old haunts in the search for clues left by his brother, while trying to evade the police, is a fantastical odyssey that takes him from Tbilisi, high into the Caucus mountains and across the forbidden border to Ossetia.

It’s a journey accompanied by fever dreams and visitations from dead relatives and friends, who variously encourage, berate and mock Saba. He is aided in his quest by taxi driver, Nodar, who becomes both his protector and accomplice, and whose acerbic wit is one of the many highlights of the narrative.

There is so much to unpick in this unlikely tale, it’s hard to know where to start. On the one hand it tells of the immigrant experience. The uprooting and fracture of a family. The return to a place, once home, now hostile. The feeling of dislocation while steeped in memories of happier times. But alongside this, it is also an uplifting story of unexpected friendship, of kindness among strangers.

Georgian author, Leo Vardiashvili, has said that it was always his ambition to write fiction that made people both laugh and cry. And in this he has undoubtedly succeeded. A triumph of a debut, and a writer to watch.

Hard by a great forest feels so contradictory but it’s balanced so beautifully. It’s sad yet hopeful, bleak yet colourful. At times I felt like my heart was breaking for the characters then you’d be snapped back by an anecdote or comment that was amusing or joyful.

What I loved most about this was the scavenger hunt that connected the main character Saba, his brother Sandro and his father Irakli. We learn so much about these characters and their relationships through these clues and quotations that are left that only they could understand. I found the hunt so fascinating and it kept me going even during the most painful parts of the book.

This book was often painful, the main character is dealing with loss, with facing the ghosts of his past, with identity, with being able to give up everything to save a loved one. There’s death and suffering and people dealing with grief and yet it shows the strength of some people in the face of losing everything.

This was such an unusual book, it was exquisitely written and it’s one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to the author, the publisher and Net Galley.

It's weird that this is a debut novel because it didn't feel like one. The writing style was amazing and the complexity of the story and of characters as well. I love that the story takes place in Georgia, in a region many people don't talk about and it analyses the view of those who decide to choose a different path for themselves and the judgment that may result as a consequence of this decision. The characters were so diverse going through various and complex feelings like grief, the survivor's guilt and betrayal too. It's a book to have in the personal library and I am happy that Goldsboro have an exclusive edition with sprayed edges included.

A unique and slightly quirky, yet always engaging story of loss and salvation set amidst the chaos of Georgia. Although an ancient, rugged culture at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Georgia is struggling with internal conflict and Russian interference, as it tries to reestablish itself as an independent country following the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Against this backdrop, Saba treks across the country in search of his brother and father. The people and the country are beautifully portrayed against the journey's hardships, both natural and man-made. Highly recommended. Special thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and NetGalley for a no-obligation advance review copy.