Born in Tbilisi GEORGIA: in 1983, Haratischvili — a playwright and novelist — moved to Germany in 2003. She writes here in German:
- “Das achte Leben” (Für Brilka) is her third novel.
Haratischwili wrote this monumental family-epic (often compared with Tolstoy), about 6 generations and 8 lifes of a Georgian family in the Soviet Union of the 20th century, between 1900 and now.
The Eighth Life gives a view of conservative Georgian society through a story spun around a family recipe for hot chocolate, which contains a secret ingredient that places a curse on anyone who consumes it.
- “The deliciousness gives pleasure, disenchantment and sometimes even death,” the old chocolatier once told her daughters.
- “I have never seen anybody who tasted this hot chocolate and did not long for more. Greediness in combination with pleasure can become fatal”
It was a warning that eventually founder his family and his country.
It is also a story around a family tapestry
!! The whole story is about how the Russians and Sovjets terrorised her homeland - and what influence this had on the average people, during the passed century.
“A century that cheated and deceived everyone, all those who hoped”.
The ancient nation figured for two centuries as the Russian (and Soviet) empire’s glamorous, beautiful south, its Tuscany or Provence.
Haratischwili’s narrator Niza, meanwhile, understands that “amputating the past” will never work, “however much these memories torment”.
Finally, the pattern in the carpet emerges as she brings together all “the things that had fallen apart”.
Self-exiled in Germany, our narrator Niza (=heaven) born in 1973, lives in Berlin and seeks in 2006 to exorcise the dramatic ancestral stories that haunt her.
She passes them on to her 12 year old wild-child niece Brilka.
From Niza’s indestructible great-grandmother Stasia, and Stasia’s attractive sister Christine, to the ever-questioning Brilka herself, the Jashi women’s progress across a blood-soaked century, weaves a decorated carpet of stories.
They are “ostentatious, colourful, carnivalesque, but also dark and sinister”.
Their men, from the rigid but troubled Soviet apparatchik Kostya to the doomed dreamer Andro (who volunteers for Hitler’s Georgian Legion), everywhere falls the fatal shadow of two fellow-Georgians: Joseph Stalin, named only as the “Generalissimus”, and his terror chief, Lavrenti Beria (the “Little Big Man”), whose lust and sadism plague the clan.
Together they are responsible for millions of deads.
Their legacy is still felt today, because after the fall of the Soviet Union nothing much has changed. Georgia still has a fake democracy with still the same kind of corrupt rulers.
- Georgia is not only an elegy, Nitsa tells Brilka: “Bear this in mind that Georgia, our country, this nonchalance (that is laziness) and lack of ambition (lack of arguments) are considered truly nobel characteristics”.
“Also that a profound identification with God (the Orthodox God), will keep them accident-free”.
“Hospitality, laziness, opportunism and conformism (this is not the perception of the majority - you and I agree on this too)”.
“Live as your parents lived; be seldom better, never - alone. Being alone is dangerous and unprofitable”
“This country idolises community and mistrusts loners. Appear in cliques, with friends, in family or interest groups, you’re worth very little on your own”.
“Never be unfaithful to your man, and if your man is unfaithful to you, forgive him (Daria!!), for he is a man! Live first and foremorel for others. Because, in any case, others always know better what is good for you”.
- But also an ode.
“Georgia is also a beautiful country, paradise on earth”.
Haratischwili tells the family story of the passed century to her 12 year old niece Brilka!!
Why the child Brilka deserves the eight life from the title of the book, the eternal life!
“I write these lines, because I owe them to you because you deserve them. Because they say the number eight represent infinity. I am giving my eight to you”
Our reading group very much appreciated Haratischwili’s work, especially because it gave us a better understanding of the war in Ukraine. We were also lucky to participate into a lecture she gave in the BOZAR in Brussels last fall.
We would recommend to read this book for better understanding the people living under occupation of a régime.
Loeky.
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