Aka Morchiladze is a widely recognised and much-loved writer from Georgia. He has authored some best-selling novels, and a series of short stories and essays mainly concerned with Georgian history and literature. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature this year for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to Georgian literature.

Morchiladze has an incredible ability to tell a story and bring the reader into his world, always engaging with new themes, new areas of experience, and, above all, new technical challenges.  He tells stories from the point of view of an outsider, but he sees the world as one of  his characters might see it. He pays thorough attention to the distinctiveness of the speech of each character.  His stories with a wide variety of voices are emotional, subtle and complex, sometimes even grotesque.

His writing technique allows mixed perception of the text: a literary text can be perceived on various levels. For some readers, it could be simply a detective story. For others, a narrative full of unique historical details, the picture of a particular era. Moreover, it could be the contemplation of the differences between past and present, the relationship and interdependence of history and memory, history and mentality, and their roles in culture. In manipulating a continuous parallel between past and present, modernity and antiquity, he uses stories and themes from Classical literature and places them in a modern context and circumstances.

Morchiladze has won a number of literary prizes in Georgia. His works have been translated and published in several countries, including Germany, Italy, Serbia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Egypt, USA, Sweden, Azerbaijan and Switzerland. 

His two novels, Journey to Karabakh and Of Old Hearts and Swords, have been translated into English by Elizabeth Heighway.  

His first novel, Journey to Karabakh (მოგზაურობა ყარაბაღში), was published in Georgia in 1992 and brought him immediate success. The novel depicts events in Georgia and the Caucasus, which took place at the beginning of the 1990s. It tells of an adventure of two young Georgians who accidentally get involved in the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Cover of Elizabeth Heighway's translation of Journey to Karabakh. H.2016/.7513

Of Old Hearts and Swords (ძველი გულებისა და ხმლისა) was published in 2007. It is a novel about nineteenth-century Georgia, re-creating the atmosphere of a culture almost lost in time. Its themes are loyalty and courage, love, friendship and war. It narrates the story of a Georgian nobleman who travels from Tbilisi to the West in search of his missing brother.

 

Cover Of Old Hearts and Swords in Georgian. YF.2008.a.20364

Morchiladze’s work Georgian Notebooks (ქართულის რვეულები) (2013) has recently been translated into English. It was published in 2022 with the title Character in Georgia. The book is a collection of stories about poets, politicians, outlaws and many other Georgians. Their personalities are different, and yet, symbolising Georgian character, they have something in common. Living in the pages of this book, they follow their unique way of behaving. Their inner lives collide with real events and become the stuff of history and legend.

The English edition (Character in Georgia), unlike the Georgian original, provides more information and context around the events and people, presenting and explaining stories for non-Georgian readers. This new approach to the original text was suggested by the English editor, Peter Nasmyth. It was finally decided to put both writers’ names on the title page.

 

Cover of Character in Georgia (awaiting shelfmark)

The British Library’s collections hold most of Morchiladze’s works, including his best novels mentioned above, as well as English translations. On several occasions, he has been invited to the British Library as a speaker and talked about Georgian literature. We look forward to seeing him at a future European Writers' Festival.

Anna Chelidze, Curator, Georgian Collections

References:

Donald Rayfield, Georgian literature in Encyclopædia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/art/Georgian-literature/The-20th-century 

Donald Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia: History (London: Garnett Press, 2010).