The Past in the Present: Writing from Georgia

This month we bring you literature from Georgia. Contemporary Georgian literature is informed by the country’s tumultuous past, and the writers here demonstrate how fiction, poetry, and memoir both reflect and shape a national culture. In warfare private and public, Teona Dolenjashvili’s childless couple find themselves in an unexpected custody battle, and former war correspondent Beka Kurkhuli sends a political activist into a bloody conflict. Career civil servant Gela Charkviani is diplomatic in his memories of advising Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze. The great Naira Gelashvili eavesdrops on a star-struck couple straight out of a nineteenth-century romance. And in poetry, Lela Samniashvili finds the past always present, and Irakli Kakabadze comforts the survivors of the horrific Beslan School siege. Guest editor Gvantsa Jobava’s insightful introduction describes the historical, political, and cultural backdrop against which these diverse authors are writing. Elsewhere, we mark the first anniversary of John Ashbery’s death with poetry and prose in his honor.