Hard by a great forest

Having fled conflict in the former-Soviet Republic of Georgia as children, Saba and his brother have fought to make peace with the past. In particular, they struggle with the sacrifices of a mother who remained in a war zone so that their father could get them out. Now, years later, the brothers are young adults, their mother is dead, and their father has been lured back to their beautiful, decaying homeland - only to disappear. Then Saba's older brother, chasing after their missing father, vanishes too. Left alone to figure out what has happened and to find his family, Saba sets off on his own urgent, haunted search across his homeland. Accompanied by new friends and old ghosts as he follows a breadcrumb trail of clues, he must wrestle the present from the past as he crosses into the kind of danger zones - both physical and emotional - that he thought he had left behind.

Format:

Book

Length:

340 pages ;

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Summary

NAMED ONE OF THE OBSERVER'S 10 BEST NEW NOVELISTS FOR 2024

"The stakes could barely be higher in Leo Vardiashvili's propulsive page-turner...It's a spellbinding achievement." --The Financial Times

"Has a commercial-fiction spring in its step.... Vardiashvili also has captured the winking, world-weary humor and magic-realist touches that mark a lot of literature from Europe's war-torn corners." -- Los Angeles Times

"This novel annihilated me.... Left my heart bruised and battered and aching for more." --Khaled Hosseini, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner

"Tender and raw and funny." --Colum McCann, National Book Award winning author of Let the Great World Spin

"Propulsive, funny, and profound."--Elif Batuman, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Idiot

"A book like no other, from an imagination like no other." --Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost

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.

Author Notes

Leo Vardiashvili was born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgia. When he was twelve, he and his family fled Georgia's post-Soviet regime for asylum in England. He studied English literature at Queen Mary University of London.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In Vardiashvili's spectacular debut, a refugee family reckons with their past. Irakli fled post-Soviet Georgia for London with his young sons Sandro and Saba, but was unable to afford passage for their mother, Eka. Years later, upon hearing Eka has died, Irakli guiltily returns to Georgia. Sandro follows, defying Irakli's wishes, and contacts Saba to say he found Irakli's trail at their old apartment. After that communication, Saba hears nothing further. Worried, he flies to Tblisi. Sandro has left graffitied clues for him on walls throughout the city, recalling their childhood scavenger hunts and supplementing Irakli's own trail of breadcrumbs, which includes pages from his unpublished play. In the capital's neglected and overgrown botanical garden, which now resembles a dark forest from the Brothers Grimm, Saba must contend with marauding wolves and a hungry tiger escaped from the zoo. As he struggles to stay one step ahead of a corrupt detective who's tailing him in order to nab Irakli, Saba faces many physical dangers, betrayals, and losses. In the end, he makes some difficult renunciations that signal his deepening maturity. The tense plot ups the ante from one narrow escape to the next, and Vardiashvili layers his seamless blend of genres (police thriller, fairy tale quest, coming-of-age story) with lush depictions of Georgia's landscape, culture, and resilient people. This will leave readers breathless. (Jan.)

Booklist Review

Vardiashvili's heartrending, beautifully crafted first novel follows Saba as he returns to Georgia for the first time since escaping as a child during the war that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He wants to find his father and brother, who recently returned to Georgia and disappeared. Upon arrival in Tbilisi from London, Saba is picked up by Nodar, an Ossetian native who fled to Georgia to avoid his own conflict and who carts Saba around in his rickety Soviet-era car. Saba's older brother, Sandro, left a series of cryptic clues throughout the city, hoping to keep the police off their trail. While decrypting the messages, Saba also relives memories and speaks to the ghosts of those he left behind. Georgian history is simultaneously a tragic tale of constant conquest and an uplifting record of the resilience of community, and both aspects are expertly woven throughout as many characters talk of their harrowing experiences while emanating a kindness and warmth Saba can barely comprehend. Laced with humor and insights similar to those of Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Safran Foer, this is a sweeping, ambitious, and almost unbelievably assured debut. Exploring the long shadow of trauma cast by any war, Vardiashvili's novel pummels the reader with an emotional force that few can match.

Library Journal Review

DEBUT Set in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, after the recent Russian occupation of South Ossetia, this part-picaresque, part-bildungsroman reinforces the theme "you can't go home again." Saba follows his brother Sandro to their former home in Tbilisi after Sandro goes searching for their father, Irakli. Saba follows the breadcrumbs his brother and his father left for him--a reference to the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale that inspired the novel's title. For years Irakli had worked tirelessly to bring his late wife to their new refuge in London. Now Irakli's guilt has driven him home to Georgia. As Saba searches, he is guided by voices of lost family and friends. Nodar, a chain-smoking taxi driver, also guides Saba on his harrowing and sometimes humorous journey to find his own voice amidst a war-torn countryside. VERDICT Vardiashvili's amazing and poignant tale of loss and resilience draws readers in with compelling descriptions of land and place. Saba encounters horrid acts of violence or their aftermath, but he also finds beauty, even magic and mystery. A remarkable debut certain to be longlisted for multiple awards, if not shortlisted for several.--Faye A. Chadwell