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A Novel
by Leo Vardiashvili
Book Reviewed by:Amid rubble and rebuilding in a former Soviet land, one family must rescue one another and put the past to rest: a stirring novel about what happens after the fighting is over
Saba is just a child when he flees the fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, for asylum in England. Two decades later, all three men are struggling to make peace with the past, haunted by the places and people they left behind.
When Irakli decides to return to Georgia, pulled back by memories of a lost wife and a decaying but still beautiful homeland, Saba and Sandro wait eagerly for news. But within weeks of his arrival, Irakli disappears, and the final message they receive from him causes a mystery to unfold before them: "I left a trail I can't erase. Do not follow it."
In a journey that will lead him to the very heart of a conflict that has marred generations and fractured his own family, Saba must retrace his father's footsteps to discover what remains of their homeland and its people. By turns savage and tender, compassionate and harrowing, Hard by a Great Forest is a powerful and ultimately hopeful novel about the individual and collective trauma of war, and the indomitable spirit of a people determined not only to survive, but to remember those who did not.
1
WHERE'S EKA
"Where's Eka?" We must have asked a thousand times.
Our mother stayed so we could escape.
See, war trumps most things. You'll find that a volley of AK‑47 rounds fired right down your street will override almost any other concern. We heard gunfire by night and saw brass twinkling on the pavement in the morning, as though it had rained shell casings all over Tbilisi. Sounds manageable so far.
But when a stray tank shell breaks the sound barrier by your bedroom window, screams on, and deletes the corner grocery shop and the entire family living above it, you'll begin to make plans. Our parents, Irakli and Eka, made plans to get us all out, divorce be damned.
Getting out of the country meant shady bribes, stolen travel stamps, and counterfeit certificates. What money the family scratched together was barely enough for one parent and us children. Eka didn't even have a passport. Together we couldn't leave the country.
Meanwhile, the civil war was warming up, bullet holes in ...
Hard by a Great Forest deals with dark themes: war, displacement, loss and grief. But although it includes more than a few harrowing scenes, the book is also funny, touching and infused with quirky charm. Frequent allusions to fairy tales—from the Brothers Grimm to The Wizard of Oz—weave throughout the book. And indeed, with its touches of the surreal (including escaped zoo animals prowling the streets of Tbilisi) and elements that evoke a fairy tale setting (including a danger-ridden forest where fireflies glow like magical lights), the book reads a bit like a fairy tale itself, a coming-of-age story in which the hero, much like Hansel and Gretel, must undertake a journey of perils before he can make it back home—wiser and stronger...continued
Full Review
(928 words)
(Reviewed by Elisabeth Herschbach).
Colum McCann, National Book Award winning author of Let the Great World Spin
This novel blows open the heart of the past. It's a mystery, it's a picaresque, it's a comedy, and it's an authentic song of belonging and unbelonging. Tender and raw and funny, it's a rattling good read about the loss of home and the primacy of story-telling. By turns political and philosophical, it introduces a fine new voice in contemporary fiction. Elif Batuman, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Idiot
A wildly charming debut—propulsive, funny, and profound. Khaled Hosseini, author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Kite Runner
This novel annihilated me. I gasped, laughed, and wept my way through it. Rich with irony and animated with astonishing humanity, this tale of a young Georgian refugee's odyssey into his birthplace to rescue family left my heart bruised and battered and aching for more.In Leo Vardiashvili's Hard by a Great Forest, young Saba and his brother and father flee their home in Tbilisi, Georgia, when the city erupts in violence. "We heard gunfire by night and saw brass twinkling on the pavement in the mornings, as though it had rained shell casings all over Tbilisi," Saba says. "[W]hen a stray tank shell breaks the barrier by your bedroom window, screams on, and deletes the corner grocery shop and the entire family living above it, you'll begin to make plans."
Strategically located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Georgia's capital city has suffered bloodshed and violence at the hands of invading armies throughout its history, from the Persians to the Ottomans to the ...
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