Hard by a Great Forest

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Hard by a Great Forest

By: Leo Vardiashvili

Narrated by: Luke Thompson

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Bloomsbury presents Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili, read by Luke Thompson.

* AN OBSERVER BEST NEW NOVELIST FOR 2024 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE 2024 *

‘A spellbinding achievement’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Poignant and often painfully comic’ OBSERVER
‘I gasped, laughed, and wept my way through it’ KHALED HOSSEINI
‘Hugely impressive’ NEW EUROPEAN
‘Novels like this might help light the way’ GUARDIAN
'At once a puzzle hunt and an affecting meditation on exile' ECONOMIST

Tbilisi’s littered with memories that await me like landmines. The dearly departed voices I silenced long ago have come back without my permission. The situation calls for someone with a plan. I didn’t even bring toothpaste.

Saba’s father is missing, and the trail leads back to Tbilisi, Georgia.

It’s been two decades since Irakli fled his war-torn homeland with two young sons, now grown men. Two decades since he saw their mother, who stayed so they could escape. At long last, Tbilisi has lured him home. But when Irakli’s phone calls stop, a mystery begins...

Arriving in the city as escaped zoo animals prowl the streets, Saba picks up the trail of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript scattered like breadcrumbs. As the voices of those left behind pull at the edges of his world, Saba will discover that all roads lead back to the past, and to secrets swallowed up by the great forests of Georgia.

In a winding pursuit through the magic and mystery of returning to a lost homeland, Hard by a Great Forest is a rare, searching tale of home, memory and sacrifice – of one family’s mission to rescue one another, and put the past to rest.

Leo VardiashviliLuke ThompsonBloomsbury Publishing

Family Life

Fantasy

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Political

World Literature

Family Life Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Political World Literature

Critic reviews

Beguiling ... Vivid, nostalgia-tinged images are littered throughout Leo Vardiashvili’s moving debut … Vardiashvili mixes a breezy tone with glinting lyricism

A compelling novel about war, family separation and ambivalent homecoming, its tale of sacrifice, guilt and betrayal is propelled by dark mysteries and offset by glorious shafts of humour ...Novels such as this might help light the way

A family story in an unfamiliar setting, the journey affords us glimpses of Georgian history, swearing, wine, eyebrows and mordant humour ... An intriguing treasure hunt, self-consciously picaresque and peppered with references to magic, myths and miracles

The stakes could barely be higher in Leo Vardiashvili’s propulsive page-turner Hard by a Great Forest ... Taking its title from a line in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Vardiashvili’s sprawling narrative, part comic, part tragic, abounds in mysteries, monsters, magic and terrors. It’s a spellbinding achievement

War trumps most things, Leo Vardiashvili observes early on in his poignant and often painfully comic novel about the effect of violence and conflict on those who must live through them

It is a testament to Vardiashvili’s writing that he converts the grief and yearning of the forcibly displaced into such a pacy and frequently funny novel ... Vardiashvili’s hugely impressive debut might be about a place that many of us will not know well but its themes are representative of the wider story of our era ... In this wise, moving and instructive book Vardiashvili, with extraordinary maturity and lightness of touch, cuts through the deafening white noise of sloganeering arguments to present the intimate lives of traumatised people doing their best

Beguiling … Vivid, nostalgia-tinged images are littered throughout Leo Vardiashvili’s moving debut … Vardiashvili mixes a breezy tone with glinting lyricism

A playful and sinister narrative about two siblings sent to the woods by their father… A treasure hunt through Georgian culture

A captivating star-burst of a novel ... An all-consuming, deeply affecting story of family, memory, courage, perseverance, and brutality, leavened with a little magic and a touch of madness ... I urge you to read it

Vardiashvili has captured the winking, world-weary humor and magic-realist touches that mark a lot of literature from Europe’s war-torn corners ... Like the voices on the radio, people can keep speaking out their dreams of rescue. And the book persuades you that sometimes, a form of it might arrive

This powerful debut draws on the legacy of the war in Georgia in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union ... A fairytale tone allows Vardiashvili to creep up on his theme of survivor’s guilt

Most relevant

The only reason I am not rating this book 5 stars is because it is too brutal and broke my heart many times over but if that was the aim, this book and this story did their job! Saba’s story is harrowing, with little lighthearted humour woven through and very little light at the end of the tunnel but I am grasping that tiny light and holding tight and hoping for better days for Saba and little Ketino! With references to old fairy tales such as Hansel & Gretel and Brother Grimm as well as Shakespeare, Hard by a Forest Green had me grinning, clutching at my chest and crying in parts. Stories about war, loss, grief, loss of identity, no real sense of where “home” is always hit me differently! X