Novel
გველის პერანგი
Not translated into English
Grigol Robakidze · 1926
Synopsis
During the First World War, Archibald Mekeshe, a painter and intellectual cut off from his roots, finds himself in Iran, which is stirred by the rivalry between the Allies and the Central Powers. It is there that he discovers his Georgian origins. Threatened by a sterility that is as much spiritual as biological, he sets out on a long initiatory journey that leads him back to the country he comes from.
Context
The book appeared in a Georgia that had been sovietised for five years, where the modernist group of which its author was one of the leading figures was already being ordered to dissolve, and the Georgian public received it with indifference. Its author translated it himself into German and had it published in Jena in 1928, with a preface by Stefan Zweig: the German press saw in it a victory for Georgian literature. It also exists in English, Russian, Ukrainian, Dutch, and since 2020 in French.
Who it is for
A novel of medium length, with a symbolist construction, available in French. It is worth knowing that the Georgia of the twenties, between lost independence and Sovietisation, sheds light on every page.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the major works of twentieth-century Georgian prose, withdrawn from libraries for sixty years and reissued only after 1991.