[Example] A gripping, genre-bending novel explores Georgia’s troubled history

In 1992 Saba Sulidze-Donauri fled civil war in his native Georgia with his brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, to find safety in London. Almost two decades later, Irakli returns to his home country and subsequently disappears. In his last email to his sons, he reveals that people are out to get him. “I left a trail I can’t erase,” he writes. “Do not follow it.” Heedless of his father’s warning, Sandro sets off in pursuit; his communications also promptly cease. Saba has no choice but to fly out to Georgia to track down his missing family members.

So begins Leo Vardiashvili’s debut novel, “Hard by a Great Forest”, a book that takes the form of a magical mystery tour, a riotous adventure, a madcap scavenger hunt and a warped fairy tale (the title comes from “Hansel and Gretel”). Shortly after Saba arrives in Tbilisi, he befriends Nodar, a taxi driver. But he also falls foul of a detective, who informs him that Irakli is wanted for attempted murder. “You have a crazy problem in a crazy country full of crazy people,” Nodar tells him.

The problems multiply further. Saba must scour the city finding—and making sense of—cryptic clues left by his brother. At the same time, he worries about more run-ins with the corrupt police, who have confiscated his passport. There is also the threat of a roaming tiger and pack of wolves to consider (the animals escaped from a zoo after a flood.)

Mr Vardiashvili deftly alternates between the real and the surreal. His more effective flights of fancy include the conversations Saba has with dearly departed friends and relatives, particularly Nino, “my sister in all the ways that matter but blood”, whose life was cruelly cut short, and Saba’s mother Eka, who could not afford to join the rest of the clan in exile. The book’s tone darkens in the gripping final chapters as Saba’s search takes him farther afield, then into treacherous territory.

“Hard by a Great Forest” is thrilling and blackly humorous, but it is also a poignant book, one that has considerable resonance today. Mr Vardiashvili, who came to London as a refugee from Georgia when he was 12, has channelled his experiences of displacement and of reconnecting with the country and culture he left behind. Some of the book’s most powerful sections relay Saba’s memories of a bloody conflict and his family’s “vagabond trek across Europe with our shrinking supply of money and blinkered courage”. Compelling prose, tragicomic episodes and well-drawn characters keep the reader on board until the journey’s end. ■