In all my years of doing Rose City Reader's European Reading Challenge I've never read a novel set in the Republic of Georgia. That's why, when I stumbled across a copy of Leo Vardiashvili's Hard by a Great Forest one recent Saturday afternoon at my small town public library I excitedly borrowed it. After lazily making my way through Vardiashvili's 2024 bittersweet comedy of a novel I was happy I did. It's easily one of the best works of fiction I've read this year.
Forced to flee the bloody fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia young Saba, his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, leave his mother behind and seek asylum in England. After his mother's disappearance and assumed death his father is swindled out of their meager family savings by a conniving countryman. Eventually, Saba loses first his father, and then his brother to the siren call of their former country as one after another they return to Georgia only vanish without a trace. Distraught and in search of answers Sandro travels to Georgia to find his missing kin. Upon arrival he's harassed and bullied by agents of the country's security forces, intent on hindering his search. His only ally is his surprisingly loyal taxi driver, who after offering to put him up at his ramshackle home acts becomes his newly acquired right hand man, helping Sandro navigate the corrupt and chaotic land of his birth.
The most interesting character in Hard by a Great Forest is the nation of Georgia itself. Poor in resources but rich in history and tradition, for centuries a vassal of foreign empires. More recently, after years of Russian and later Soviet rule Georgia, though finally independent lies broken and dysfunctional. Sandro encounters a land plagued by corruption and petty tyrants weakly limping along, populated by a people as independent as they are hospitable.
Vardiashvili has crafted an impressive debut novel and I eagerly look forward to reading more from this talented and promising author.
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