The Eighth Life
Nino Haratischvili, 2014 (2020 in the U.S & U.K.; transl., Charlotte Collins, Ruth Martin)
Scribe Publications, Ltd.
944 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781950354146
Summary
An epic family saga beginning with the Russian Revolution and swirling across a century, encompassing war, loss, love requited and unrequited, ghosts, joy, massacres, tragedy.
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers.
It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste.
Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.
Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections.
A ballet dancer never makes it to Paris and a singer pines for Vienna. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again.
The world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. At home in two different worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve.
In 2010, her debut novel Juja was nominated for the German Book Prize, as was her most recent Die Katze und der General in 2018. In its German edition, The Eighth Life was a bestseller, and won the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize 2018.
The Eighth Life is being translated into many languages, and has already been a major bestseller on publication in Holland, Poland, and Georgia. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Something rather extraordinary happened. The world fell away and I fell, wholly, happily, into the book…. My breath caught in my throat, tears nestled in my lashes…devastatingly brilliant.
New York Times Book Review
Spanning six generations of a family between 1900 and the 21st century, its characters travel to Tbilisi, Moscow, London and Berlin in an epic story of doomed romance that combines humour with magic realism.
Guardian (UK)
This is a long, rewarding novel…ably translated through a collaborative process. It makes for an engrossing book. Haratischvili has created a fascinating cast (and it’s easy to imagine it as a television series) whose lives illuminate some of the greatest events of the 20th century.
Irish Times (UK)
Elegant… [and] demonstrates a technical mastery, impressively sustained…. The Eighth Life is more than a family saga: it is an ode, a lamentation, a monument―to Georgia, its people, its past and future.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
The Eighth Life is capacious, voluble, urgent, readable, translated heroically and sparklingly by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.
Telegraph (UK)
Nino Haratischvili's elegant epic… is a triumph of both authorship and painstaking translation…. The Eighth Life is an unforgettable love letter to Georgia and the Caucasus, to lives led and to come, and to writing itself.
Economist
The Eighth Life… is a lavish banquet of family stories that can, for all their sorrows, be devoured with gluttonous delight. Nino Haratischvili’s characters… come to exuberant life. Her huge novel… shows a double face, its crushing pain and loss nonetheless conveyed with an artful storyteller’s sheer joy in her craft.
Financial Times
(Starred review) [An] exceptional, deeply evocative saga…. In heartfelt prose, Haratischvili seamlessly weaves the political upheaval around the characters into love and loss…. [Her] epic portrait of a close-knit family is a stunning tribute to the power of resilience.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) If it’s a family saga you’re seeking, look no further than this grand tale…. The author gracefully interweaves the historical backdrop of her novel with the lives of her characters, thus adding depth to her story. Heartily recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) This novel has generated substantial industry buzz and international critical praise. Both are justified…. The Eighth Life—the story of a family, a country, a century—is an imaginative, expansive, and important read.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
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