Georgia: The Brueghel Moon (Tamaz Chiladze, trans. Maya Kiasashvili)
What a weird and beautiful book. The Brueghel Moon is written by Tamaz Chiladze (born 1931), known in Georgia as a writer, playwright, and poet. He has won a number of prizes for his work, but information about him in English is quite hard to come by. Published by Dalkey Archive, one of the best presses I’ve found for good translations of non-English literature, the book was only published in 2015 in English, although it’s Georgian publication was significantly earlier.
Background: Placing Georgia into the "Asia" category feels somewhat disingenuous; the country might be be appropriately placed into "Eurasia," but I'm sticking with the technical. Georgia was a feudal country for a long time (look up Queen Tamar; she was pretty awesome). After Turkic invasions in the 1200-1400s, the Kingdom eventually collapsed into a number of separate governing entities by 1466, and until the late 18th centuries, the Iranian and Ottoman dynasties had control over the east and west respectively. By 1744, the east was stabilized under King Heraclius II. In 1783, eastern Georgia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk, becoming a protectorate of Russia. Unfortunately, Russia did not step in during a number of invasions, resulting in the sack of Tbilisi in 1795. By 1800, Georgia was taken into the Russian Empire, and any independent regions were slowly annexed over the next century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic came into being, consisting of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Georgia eventually became independent on May 26, 1918, however this was short-lived as the Soviet Union seized power in 1921, during which time Georgia's economy improved even as government corruption ran rampant. Finally, on April 9, 1991, Georgia finally became independent once again although civil war continued until 1995. For more recent news on the increased tensions between Georgia and Russia since 2008, I recommend referring to a news source.
Delving into the novel, it tells the story of a psychiatrist whose wife is leaving him, and yet that is not the focus of the story. It is really about the nature of human relationships, the complexity and difficulty in knowing someone, intertwined with some introspection into the nature of mental illness and madness….and a *tiny* bit of sci-fi. (This really shouldn’t put you on or off; it is so minor to the plot, you can really ignore it if you wish). The narration changes time and place frequently, which can leave the reader a little off-kilter, but it’s best to just go with it, and eventually everything is tied together (perhaps too neatly?). It’s certainly a fun read; I loved the language, and I really enjoyed the novel a lot for it’s mysterious plot twists after the initial section (where the protagonist’s wife leaves – in some ways this also seems pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things). All in all a fun, short novel. Definitely recommended.
