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Reading the City: A City in Short Fiction
The Book of Tbilisi: A City in Short Fiction
A rookie reporter, searching for his first big story, re-opens a murder case that once saw crowds of protestors surround Tbilisi's central police station...
A piece of romantic graffiti chalked outside a new apartment block sends its residents into a social media frenzy, trying to identify the two lovers implicated by it....
A war-orphaned teenager looks after his dying sister in an abandoned railway carriage on the edge of town, hoping that someday soon the state will take care of them...
In the 26 years since Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union, the country and its capital, Tbilisi, have endured unimaginable hardships: one coup d'état, two wars with Russia, the cancer of organised crime, and prolonged periods of brutalising, economic depression. Now, as the city begins to flourish again – drawing hordes of tourists with its eclectic architecture and famous, welcoming spirit – it's difficult to reconcile the recent past with this glamorous and exotic present. With wit, warmth, heartbreaking realism, and a distinctly Georgian sense of neighbourliness, these ten stories do just that.
'Acts as an introduction to a literature quite neglected by the Anglophone world... the language consistently has the direct, clean and unadorned quality of great fiction.' – Luke Kennard.
‘A soaring, searing collection – important new stories that are sure to live long in the memory.’ – Eley Williams, author of Attrib.
Published with the support of the Georgian National Book Center and the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia.
A piece of romantic graffiti chalked outside a new apartment block sends its residents into a social media frenzy, trying to identify the two lovers implicated by it....
A war-orphaned teenager looks after his dying sister in an abandoned railway carriage on the edge of town, hoping that someday soon the state will take care of them...
In the 26 years since Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union, the country and its capital, Tbilisi, have endured unimaginable hardships: one coup d'état, two wars with Russia, the cancer of organised crime, and prolonged periods of brutalising, economic depression. Now, as the city begins to flourish again – drawing hordes of tourists with its eclectic architecture and famous, welcoming spirit – it's difficult to reconcile the recent past with this glamorous and exotic present. With wit, warmth, heartbreaking realism, and a distinctly Georgian sense of neighbourliness, these ten stories do just that.
'Acts as an introduction to a literature quite neglected by the Anglophone world... the language consistently has the direct, clean and unadorned quality of great fiction.' – Luke Kennard.
‘A soaring, searing collection – important new stories that are sure to live long in the memory.’ – Eley Williams, author of Attrib.
Published with the support of the Georgian National Book Center and the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia.
136 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 14, 2017
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245 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 20, 2022
Read Around the World: Georgia
4 Stars for the stories; some were just okay, some were amazing, none were even remotely boring. IF you are doing Read Around the World, I highly recommend this book.
5 HUGE stars for the narrator; I am so blessed and she is amazing.
4 Stars for the stories; some were just okay, some were amazing, none were even remotely boring. IF you are doing Read Around the World, I highly recommend this book.
5 HUGE stars for the narrator; I am so blessed and she is amazing.
May 9, 2019
We read to experience lives entirely different from our own. If you’ve ever been curious about what it would be like to have grown up and lived in Georgia, this is the book for you. The Book of Tbilisi is an anthology of ten short stories by various authors. Each details the experience of living in Tbilisi, which is now the flourishing capital of Georgia. As you can imagine, the city has had its fair share of struggles.
The book opens with an introduction on Georgian history, which is brutal at times. It also details its language, customs, and culture. While all of these themes are explored throughout the fiction, the introduction is definitely worth reading. Before picking up this book, I barely knew anything about Georgia. I feel as if it’s rarely spoken about or given enough attention. But every single Georgian has a story to tell. Here are ten.
‘The citizens of this country are ordinary people, and some of them you’ll get to know (and perhaps even sympathise with) in the stories that follow, for they are like-minded souls, living not far from you, and who, like you, believe in miracles sometimes.’
The setting of each story is clear from the anthology’s title. What I noticed when reading, however, is that the place is not quite as important as the people who live in it. The author might introduce a setting at the start of each piece, but immediately situate a character in that setting. Each of the stories is strikingly human. The anthology presents a cast of rebellious teenagers, struggling parents, angry neighbours. People you’ll know and recognise.
‘I wanted Meda, my mum, to be taking care of my poor dad, to be the one brushing crumbs off his bed, talking to him in a soft voice, reminding him of their first date.’
As in any anthology, some stories are more gripping, while others fall through the cracks of your memory. One of my personal favourites is “On Facebook”, which is about the residents of an apartment block who use social media to find out who vandalised their building. Another is “Precision”, about the close relationship between two siblings and the struggles they face together. Another, “Flood”, is short but not exactly sweet. It’s a fast-paced and intense tale which depicts how people act when time is running out.#
‘When people die, they get buried. In Tusi’s case, it happened the other way around. First they buried her, then she died.’
Because the collection features ten stories from ten different authors, there is not one uniform writing style throughout. At times, it can be jarring to constantly switch from one voice to another. I’d recommend to take your time with this one. It’s a short book, but you don’t need to read the stories all in one go. Keep the book on your bedside table to flick through a story whenever you’re in the mood. That way, you’ll actually remember the stories you read. Because they’re worth remembering.
‘In Tbilisi, winter is about to arrive too. On the streets, by the railway station, people are walking up and down. Woman, child, student, merchant, homeless, vagabond, prostitute, drunkard, stray dog, police man, soldier… some are leaving, others are returning. Some don’t want to go anywhere in particular… others are sick of everything.’
The Book of Tbilisi deserves every piece of praise it gets. It deals with raw emotion, real struggles, and introduces characters who leap from the page and exist outside of the stories they were created for. If there’s one thing I’ll take from this book, it’s that a place is how it is because of the people who live there. My body has never been in Tbilisi, but my mind feels like it has.
The book opens with an introduction on Georgian history, which is brutal at times. It also details its language, customs, and culture. While all of these themes are explored throughout the fiction, the introduction is definitely worth reading. Before picking up this book, I barely knew anything about Georgia. I feel as if it’s rarely spoken about or given enough attention. But every single Georgian has a story to tell. Here are ten.
‘The citizens of this country are ordinary people, and some of them you’ll get to know (and perhaps even sympathise with) in the stories that follow, for they are like-minded souls, living not far from you, and who, like you, believe in miracles sometimes.’
The setting of each story is clear from the anthology’s title. What I noticed when reading, however, is that the place is not quite as important as the people who live in it. The author might introduce a setting at the start of each piece, but immediately situate a character in that setting. Each of the stories is strikingly human. The anthology presents a cast of rebellious teenagers, struggling parents, angry neighbours. People you’ll know and recognise.
‘I wanted Meda, my mum, to be taking care of my poor dad, to be the one brushing crumbs off his bed, talking to him in a soft voice, reminding him of their first date.’
As in any anthology, some stories are more gripping, while others fall through the cracks of your memory. One of my personal favourites is “On Facebook”, which is about the residents of an apartment block who use social media to find out who vandalised their building. Another is “Precision”, about the close relationship between two siblings and the struggles they face together. Another, “Flood”, is short but not exactly sweet. It’s a fast-paced and intense tale which depicts how people act when time is running out.#
‘When people die, they get buried. In Tusi’s case, it happened the other way around. First they buried her, then she died.’
Because the collection features ten stories from ten different authors, there is not one uniform writing style throughout. At times, it can be jarring to constantly switch from one voice to another. I’d recommend to take your time with this one. It’s a short book, but you don’t need to read the stories all in one go. Keep the book on your bedside table to flick through a story whenever you’re in the mood. That way, you’ll actually remember the stories you read. Because they’re worth remembering.
‘In Tbilisi, winter is about to arrive too. On the streets, by the railway station, people are walking up and down. Woman, child, student, merchant, homeless, vagabond, prostitute, drunkard, stray dog, police man, soldier… some are leaving, others are returning. Some don’t want to go anywhere in particular… others are sick of everything.’
The Book of Tbilisi deserves every piece of praise it gets. It deals with raw emotion, real struggles, and introduces characters who leap from the page and exist outside of the stories they were created for. If there’s one thing I’ll take from this book, it’s that a place is how it is because of the people who live there. My body has never been in Tbilisi, but my mind feels like it has.
June 18, 2023
I got this because I was visiting Tbilisi. About half of the stories were truly excellent and I would have been happy to read them regardless. About half were not to my taste (interestingly almost all of the second half of the stories).
A few that I quite liked (and there is nothing else I can find in English translation by any of these authors):
Uncle Evgeni's Game by Dato Kardava: A journalist named Redhead is sent out to write about something new and sensational, ends up writing about an old murder which ends up rebounding into the present, told in a bit of a noirish fashion (it opens "Journalists were like cigarette ash and the news desk was like a dirty ashtray that no one bothered to empty till it was full"), often through recorded transcripts.
On Facebook by Gela Chkvanava: Two lovers names are written in an apartment parking lot, everyone in the building turns into Facebook sleuths trying to figure out how they are, hilarious misadventures and some seriousness ensue, captures the small town feeling of Tbilisi, a particular apartment building but also Facebook.
Precision by Erekle Deisadze: A brutal story about two homeless siblings, one dying of cancer, wracked by the Russo-Georgian wars. Truly brutal.
Peridé by Zviad Kvaratskhelia: Nothing particularly local feeling about this story about an older woman walking laps around an apartment building, nice interior monologues.
Tea by Zviad Kvaratskhelia: A tragicomic story that is like a miniature novel about a man who is down on his luck, ends up working as a reality TV booker, books a Chinese massage therapist from his building, and terrible consequences based on combinations of greed, sexism and racism ensue.
Patagonia by Bacho Kairtia: I probably should have saved the word "brutal" for this one about an older woman who is basically enslaved to a brutal man, selling bread by day, engaged in prostitution at night, and forced to give all the money to him--all in the years after her son was killed trying to steal copper wire and she had gone from tragedy to tragedy.
A few that I quite liked (and there is nothing else I can find in English translation by any of these authors):
Uncle Evgeni's Game by Dato Kardava: A journalist named Redhead is sent out to write about something new and sensational, ends up writing about an old murder which ends up rebounding into the present, told in a bit of a noirish fashion (it opens "Journalists were like cigarette ash and the news desk was like a dirty ashtray that no one bothered to empty till it was full"), often through recorded transcripts.
On Facebook by Gela Chkvanava: Two lovers names are written in an apartment parking lot, everyone in the building turns into Facebook sleuths trying to figure out how they are, hilarious misadventures and some seriousness ensue, captures the small town feeling of Tbilisi, a particular apartment building but also Facebook.
Precision by Erekle Deisadze: A brutal story about two homeless siblings, one dying of cancer, wracked by the Russo-Georgian wars. Truly brutal.
Peridé by Zviad Kvaratskhelia: Nothing particularly local feeling about this story about an older woman walking laps around an apartment building, nice interior monologues.
Tea by Zviad Kvaratskhelia: A tragicomic story that is like a miniature novel about a man who is down on his luck, ends up working as a reality TV booker, books a Chinese massage therapist from his building, and terrible consequences based on combinations of greed, sexism and racism ensue.
Patagonia by Bacho Kairtia: I probably should have saved the word "brutal" for this one about an older woman who is basically enslaved to a brutal man, selling bread by day, engaged in prostitution at night, and forced to give all the money to him--all in the years after her son was killed trying to steal copper wire and she had gone from tragedy to tragedy.
August 25, 2023
A collection is several Georgian short stories. I’ve never visited that part of the world, even though both Georgia and Armenia are on my bucket list, so I was quite curious to give it a go. And the results were mixed. A couple of the stories were very depressing, post-Soviet style. As somebody from another post-Soviet country, the tone and subjects were familiar enough, sadly. The best and most memorable one involved social media used in a dispute taking place in a building. Very fresh and fun.
June 17, 2020
This short book of ten short stories about the Georgian capital can be read in an afternoon — and what a memorable afternoon that would be. These mostly young authors grew up in independent Georgia, and the stories they tell are all set during the post-Soviet era. Some are amusing, some sad, but all well-written and well translated. My personal favourite was Lado Kilasonia’s “The Bronx Tale A La Gold Quarter” which brought a smile to my face. Highly recommended.
January 30, 2025
This book achieved what I am hoping for from the Reading the City series, providing captivating stories and enriching my knowledge of the world and the people who live in it - starting with the fact that I had had a very weak grasp of which country Tbilisi is in. The introduction revealed things I had forgotten about (the Russian invasion and occupation of South Ossetia) and of which I had been completely ignorant (Georgians speak... Georgian!)
As the stories followed one another, there was however a sense of recognition of Eastern European/Russian literature with bleak stories and wry stories which conveyed both universal themes and a distinctive flavour of a place and its people's concerns. I was especially tickled by the story of the 'X loves Y' type graffiti and the repercussions in the community.
As the stories followed one another, there was however a sense of recognition of Eastern European/Russian literature with bleak stories and wry stories which conveyed both universal themes and a distinctive flavour of a place and its people's concerns. I was especially tickled by the story of the 'X loves Y' type graffiti and the repercussions in the community.
September 23, 2019
I read this while in Tbilisi and it was enjoyable to immediately identify many of the places described - one character is in love with a woman serving in the Rustaveli Square branch of the Golden Arches, a landmark I passed by on numerous occasions. As with many collections though, it's a bit patchy - which is a shame given that it's a more than worthwhile venture to bring a lesser known country’s fiction to a wider audience. The stand out story for me was the longest, Iza Pezuashvili’s Tsa involving a TV station and the arrival of a Chinese community into the Georgian capital. There is much sign of the influence of Andrey Kurkov hear so in that, the book very much represents the Post-Soviet space.
April 6, 2024
This is a collection of ten short stories by Georgian authors, all of which take place in the capital city of Tbilisi. As with any anthology, some stories are better than others. I loved the artwork on the cover of the paperback I read. I suggest you read the ten page introduction, especially if you are not very familiar with Georgia's history. A few of the stories are a bit difficult to read, like Precision and Patagonia, because of their subject matter, but they reflect life in this ancient city. If you like all of your stories to have a conclusion all wrapped up and tied with a pretty bow, a few of these stories will be disappointing. Overall, I enjoyed the collection and feel a little closer to the people who have endured so many wars and privations.
November 27, 2023
Most of the stories could have taken place anywhere and were universal in nature. Thus, I would not say this edition made me feel closer to Georgia/Tblilisi, but it did make me worried for the mental state of the average Georgian writer, as the common thread in all of these stories was 'struggle', loneliness, brutality, abuse
despair, etc. The stories all bummed me out either a lot or a little, and I couldn't reconcile these characters with any of the modern Georgians I met while in Tbilisi.
despair, etc. The stories all bummed me out either a lot or a little, and I couldn't reconcile these characters with any of the modern Georgians I met while in Tbilisi.
July 4, 2025
Tough start. I thought originally the stories just had poor translations, but as I read more, I realized there were several misses in the collection. I picked this up hoping to understand Georgian culture, but it's not as exotic as I thought. These are stories have a lot of darkness in common with American urban plights. Everyone should read Flood and Tsa
dnf-d
December 5, 2021Unfortunately, I haven't enjoyed any of the short stories I've read so far, and I don't want to continue reading in hopes of enjoying something, especially when I've gotten so far in the collection.
If anyone has a favourite Georgian writer to recommend, I'd love to know, please and thank you :)
If anyone has a favourite Georgian writer to recommend, I'd love to know, please and thank you :)
January 12, 2024
Really nice read - very Georgian, gives a good insight on what life in Georgia is like. Read it in English to see if i could recommend to friends who want to know more about Georgia, i’ll read it in Georgian next.
October 28, 2025
I overall really enjoyed these, some more than others and I did find the translations quite clunky at times. My favourites were Patagonia, Precision, and Peridé.
A nice lil companion for a beautiful few days in Tbilisi.
A nice lil companion for a beautiful few days in Tbilisi.
June 2, 2019
Life is apparently much harder for some people in the city.
November 2, 2021
There are few short stories that I like, but I read it so long because Tsa, that really long pages and made me struggle.
December 31, 2024
A quirky collection of short stories set in and around Tbilisi. Lots of characters here and lovely to read in the Summer sunshine sipping wine in the old town.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews