The arrival of the writer Nino with an unpronounceable surname was that unusual popular cyclone for a genre with much historical fiction but loaded with enough sociological and geopolitical overtones to scare off bestselling readers.
The eighth life it was an exercise in conciliation between literature supposedly transcendent for quality and message and the bestsellers, as vilified as secretly longed for by any writer.
The balance to reach everyone could not be done except from the extension of the work. Nothing can be synthesized without leaving substantial parts in the pipeline so that some readers or others end up enjoying such a resounding plot.
And now Nino returns with another great novel that abounds in its magic formula about the parallel destinies of countries and families, of the great geopolitical movements and the small advances towards survival. The magical contrast of which Nino has made his particular scene full of guilt, melancholy, heartbreak, passions, secrets and all kinds of sensations you held as an unforgettable chorus of a great composition.
Chechnya, 1995: Nura dreams of fleeing her village, where clans rule the law and war threatens to crush all her dreams of freedom, which for her focus on her most prized possession, a Rubik's cube. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the young Russian Aleksandr Orlov abandons the love of his life to go to the front.
Twenty years later, this young idealist and reader has become an oligarch known in Berlin as the General, and memories of those years of war haunt him. He then sets out on a journey in search of the Cat, a mysterious young actress whom he saw for the last time with a Rubik's cube in her hand. Guilt, atonement, and redemption guide this journey as everyone tries to find their place.
You can now buy the novel "The Cat and the General", by Nino Haratischwili, here: