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Hard by a Great Forest

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Hard by a Great Forest

Von: Leo Vardiashvili
Gesprochen von: 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up the trail of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript scattered like breadcrumbs.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.
Belletristik Familienleben Fantasy Märchen Politik
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Kritikerstimmen

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
BeguilingVivid, 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
Alle Sterne
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I rarely write reviews online but with this book I feel like I have to leave a little note (although, i can’t yet fully articulate what I’m feeling and thinking). I felt all the emotions there are. As Saba ventures on we are drawn deeper into Georgia and the further he goes it starts to feel like a fairytale. And like a fairy tale it’s beautiful and cruel, sad, rich and full of love and longing with the occasional hippo going for a city adventure. It is very beautifully read by Luke Thompson & it will probably stay with me for a long time :•)

This is why I love (audio-)books!

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I seldom write reviews, but this audiobook deserves far more than the two existing ones.
The story takes us into a Georgia that, much like its inhabitants, is scarred by war. Even so, we follow the adult Saba in his search for his father, who disappeared while travelling through his homeland.
At its heart, the novel is about what war and displacement do to children's souls. That is exactly why the often bizarre quests fit so perfectly: the fairy-tale allusions, the graffiti clues, the escaped zoo animals roaming the streets of Tbilisi.
Leo Vardiashvili wonderfully opens a window into Saba's inner world, profoundly shaped by the mindset of his difficult childhood, through the imaginary voices of all the relatives and friends whom the war has taken from him.
And all of this is brought vividly to life by the magnificent Luke Thompson, whose performance elevates the story even further.
In short, this is one of the most impressive audiobooks I have ever listened to.

a story that stays with you

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