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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, two friends, writers living in post-conflict regions, decided to publish their two novels in a single book under a single cover, resulting in a powerful, anti-war, literary endeavor that spans borders and transcends political divides, now available in English.
List of contents
Preface
The President’s Cat
Guram Odisharia
The Shore of Night: A Novel
Daur Nachkebia
About the author
Guram Odisharia, born in 1951, is the award-winning author of nearly thirty poetic, prose, and journalistic books, including critically acclaimed novels such as
The Ocean of the Black Sea,
The President's Cat, and
The Cyclops Bomb. Honored with over ten national and international literary prizes, his works have been translated into over twenty languages. He currently resides in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Born in 1960,
Daur Nachkebia, a physicist, has been honored with Abkhazia's Dmitry Gulia State Award for Literature, Art, and Architecture for his novel
The Shore of Night, as well as the Fazil Iskander International Literary Award.
The Shore of Night has been translated into Georgian, Armenian, Croatian, Serbian, Spanish, German, Italian, and Dutch, and Nachkebia's other stories can be read in Azerbaijani, English, Armenian, Georgian, and Ossetian. He is the Director of the Association of Publishing Houses in Abkhazia and currently resides in Sukhumi, Abkhazia.
Summary
In this joint volume of Caucausian fiction, two friends from opposing sides of the unresolved Georgian-Abkhaz conflict join forces to craft a poignant anti-war narrative that spans borders and transcends political divides.
After finding themselves on opposing sides of a war-torn region, Guram Odisharia and Daur Nachkebia, once comrades in the Writers' Union, chose to collaborate and publish their respective novels under one cover in a powerful literary endeavor that’s now available in English.
The President’s Cat from Georgian writer Guram Odisharia paints a vivid picture of Sukhumi, a once-exotic city-resort marred by the horrors of war. Against the backdrop of this surreal conflict, Odisharia's characters navigate the chaos with raw, palpable humanity.
In Daur Nachkebia’s The Shore of Night, the novel’s protagonist begins a soul-searching journey to understand the profound impact of conflict on human life after finding the diary of a friend who died in the war. Delving into the human experience and psyche against the backdrop of the Soviet empire’s collapse and the brutal war in Abkhazia, it explores the struggle to maintain individuality and expand personal horizons despite the confines of society.
Exploring real tragedies of individuals caught in the zone of conflict, the nuances of peace and war in the South Caucasus, and the prospects of reconciliation in post-conflict regions, the collection Two Novels from the Caucasus is a testament to the enduring power of literature to bridge divides and illuminate universal truths.
