Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564787168 ISBN 13: 9781564787163

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012

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.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Heighway holds a BA in Philosophy and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford and is currently studying for an MA in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham. She translates from Georgian and French.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

I live here. From now on I will always live here. It’s always raining here. They say it’s always rained here and it always will. At first I couldn't stand it, but now I know how good it is for you. See, the skin on my face looks so clear now,just like all the other women here. It’s not all because of the rain, though. I don’t smoke anymore, because it’s always raining here, and everything’s damp and it makes the cigarettes taste funny. I don’t drink anymore either, because it costs too much and if my boss found out he’d fire me. And so my face looks clear and I’m very white, just like the walls of my apartment. The walls of my apartment are all white too, just like at work. At first I thought I might hang some paintings on them, but then I changed my mind about going to buy them, because it’s always raining. I’m not home much anyway: in the morning I go to work, from work to the cafeteria, from the cafeteria back home. I wear rain boots outside, and they’re red ones too, so that I don’t get sad and so that every day feels like a holiday. — Ana Kordzaia, “ Rain”