The art of history, so they say, was born in the flickering of a campfire. ‘Character in Georgia,’ by Aka Morchiladze and Peter Nasmyth, returns us to this historical ethos as a litany of tales to be shared and celebrated.
In its pages, we meet Georgia’s noble bandits, such as Arsena of Marabda, and its intellectual luminaries, such as Ilia Chavchavadze. They emerge from the past fully-fleshed and ready to re-live the stories that inform the modern Georgian national character.
To the English speaker, this book is nothing short of a gift for anyone hoping to get past the curtain of khinkali, good wine, and mustachioed men in chokhas.
Character is an inspired version of Kartulis Rveulebi (Georgian Notebooks) by Aka Morchiladze, a historian and Georgia’s most celebrated contemporary writer of fiction. With the help of the talented translator Maya Kiasashvili, the text was placed in the hands of Peter Nasmyth, a well-known British writer who has lived part-time in Georgia for 30 years and authored a small collection of well-received books on the country.
The key to Character’s accessibility to the English-speaker is Nasmyth’s charming writing style and deep appreciation for his subject. Morchildaze’s original audience was, of course, the Georgian public, who require no introduction to the characters, contexts and geographies that provide the landscape of the book.
Perhaps the most impressive achievement of Character is the mastery with which all necessary facts and historical contexts are woven seamlessly into the origi
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