Novel
სამოსელი პირველი
Not translated into English
Guram Dochanashvili · 1975
Synopsis
Domenico, a young peasant from a mountain village, listens to the tale of a fugitive from elsewhere and has only one idea left: to leave. He leaves his father's house for the Beautiful City, where merchants, philosophers and women await him, and where he will have to choose between what is offered to him and what he has left behind.
Context
The first book appeared in 1975 from Nakaduli, in Tbilisi, and its author took another fifteen years to bring the cycle to its end, publishing the second in 1978, the third in 1980 and the fourth in 1990. The evangelical parable serves as the framework of an adventure novel whose official readers did not see what it refused: the tale protected. The German version by Susanne Kihm and Nikolos Lomtadse appeared from Carl Hanser in 2018 under the title Das erste Gewand, running to six hundred and ninety-one pages, in the year Georgia was the guest of the Frankfurt book fair; there is no English version.
Who it is for
Six hundred and seventy pages in Georgian, with no French version. One must know that the whole appeared in four volumes spread over fifteen years, and is read straight through.
Prizes and reception
The most widely read book in Georgia: a national survey on the Georgians' favourite book, modelled on the BBC's, placed it first, and by a wide margin.