Hard by a Great Forest

Author Leo Vardiashvili
Narrator Luke Thompson
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Run Time 10 hours and 24 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Fairy and Folk tales, Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Political / legal thriller, Thriller / suspense fiction.

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What to expect

* AN OBSERVER BEST NEW NOVELIST FOR 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up the trail of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript scattered like breadcrumbs.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.

Critics Review

Beguiling … Vivid, nostalgia-tinged images are littered throughout Leo Vardiashvili’s moving debut … Vardiashvili mixes a breezy tone with glinting lyricism
Sunday Times
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
Guardian
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
Financial Times
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
Observer, 10 Best New Novelists for 2024
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
New European
Beguiling … Vivid, nostalgia-tinged images are littered throughout Leo Vardiashvili’s moving debut … Vardiashvili mixes a breezy tone with glinting lyricism
Sunday Times
A playful and sinister narrative about two siblings sent to the woods by their father… A treasure hunt through Georgian culture
TLS
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
Country & Townhouse
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
Los Angeles Times
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
Mail on Sunday
Hard by a Great Forest has the offbeat lucidity of a waking dream … a novel that indeed resembles a walk through a dark forest, Vardiashvili’s imaginative powers render his timely subject matter at once strange, disorientating and – occasionally – even magical
Daily Mail
A stupendous debut, by turns nerve-shredding, heart-rending and hilarious
Saga
Vardiashvili pushes the story on at pace as Saba searches for clues in the colourful enclaves of Georgia … This debut is a heartfelt, lively story
i (Press Association)
This debut novel captures both the long scars of collective trauma and the indomitable spirit of those determined to remember and survive
Oprah Daily, Most Anticipated Books of 2024
A sensitive exploration of grief, memory, loss and the immigrant experience woven seamlessly into a propulsive narrative
Perspective magazine
Rich with irony and animated with astonishing humanity, this tale of a young Georgian refugee’s odyssey into his birthplace to rescue family left my heart bruised and battered and aching for more
Khaled Hosseini
A wildly charming debut – propulsive, funny, and profound
Elif Batuman
Astonishingly crafted with history, candour, beauty, grief and just a little magic. A book like no other, from an imagination like no other. Vardiashvili has written a triumph
Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of LESS IS LOST
This novel blows open the heart of the past. It’s a mystery, it’s a picaresque, it’s a comedy, and it’s an authentic song of belonging and unbelonging … By turns political and philosophical, it introduces a fine new voice in contemporary fiction
Colum McCann
Propulsive, profoundly moving and rich with humour and heartbreak, Hard by a Great Forest mesmerised me from the very first page. Inspired by Vardiashvili’s own family story, this novel will capture your heart
Jean Kwok
A sweeping, ambitious, and almost unbelievably assured debut. Exploring the long shadow of trauma cast by any war, Vardiashvili’s novel pummels the reader with an emotional force that few can match
Booklist (starred review)
Hard By A Great Forest movingly evokes the complicated feelings of trying to recapture and redefine what home looks and feels like
Bookreporter
Lushly haunted debut
Shelf Awareness

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