Epic Georgian Novel Available for Preorder

Author Nino Haratischwili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, but now lives in Germany and writes her novels in German. Her professional writing life has been in German, and she finds that the distance from her native language is helpful in her creative process. Her previous novel, "The Eighth Life (for Brilka)," was a sprawling, multi-generational saga of a Georgian family that spanned over 900 pages and drew comparisons to Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." That book also explored the cyclical nature of Georgian history and the inheritance of trauma. "The Lack of Light" focuses on four friends—Dina, Nene, Ira, and Keto—growing up together in a Tbilisi courtyard during the turbulent 1990s. The story follows their intense friendship through the chaos of the newly independent state, shaped by everything from first loves to violent street battles and a drug epidemic. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Georgian Civil War, a period the author describes as "dark and brutal." The narrative depicts the daily realities for a "lost generation" facing food rationing, power cuts, and the rise of organized crime following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The plot is anchored by a narrative jump to 2019, where the three surviving friends reunite in Brussels for a posthumous retrospective of the fourth friend's photography. This exhibition forces them to confront a past shattered by a tragic death and an unforgivable betrayal. Haratischwili deliberately tells the story from a feminine perspective, aiming to give voice to the women who lived through what she calls an extremely "masculine" period of Georgian history. Her work is often compared to the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante.