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A Novel of Georgia
by Nino Haratischwili
A page-turning epic of loss and redemption in the vein of Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, about a group of four women who formed a deep friendship in the turbulent years leading up to and after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.
They are four, as different as can be: the romantic Nene, the clever outsider Ira, the idealistic Dina, and the sensitive Keto. Inseparable since childhood, they grow up together in an old Tiblisi courtyard, in Georgia, at a time when the Soviet Union is crumbling and the future of their country is in question. Each in her own way experiences love, hope, and disappointment as local mob wars, romance, and civil war threaten to swallow up their worlds. Rising to challenges both personal and political —a first love that can only blossom in secret, violent street skirmishes, a ravaging drug epidemic—the four women's friendship seems indestructible, until an unforgivable act of betrayal and a tragic death shatter their bond.
Decades later, the three survivors reunite at a major retrospective of their late friend's photography. The pictures on display tell the story not only of their country but also of their friendship, and, confronted by them, Nene, Ira, and Keto relive their staggering loss. Then, unexpectedly, something new is glimpsed, and forgiveness seems within reach. Like the International Booker Prize nominated The Eighth Life before it, Nino Haratischwili's The Lack of Light is an emotionally bold, decades-spanning epic in which to lose yourself, brought to life by the vibrant colors of Georgia's culture and its people. It is a glorious book readers will return to again and again.
"Haratischwili enchants with this monumental novel that follows four friends in Georgia from the end of the Soviet era to the near present...[An] explosive and intimate tale of the women's struggle to not only survive but thrive...Readers will find [The Lack of Light] irresistible." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A thrilling, heartbreaking, unforgettable story. Not a page too long." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This story of four young friends in 1990's Georgia took me back to my own childhood in Cuba. The Lack of Light is a novel that thrills you, the kind you can't put down. Nino Haratischwili grips you from the first page with an intensity that only great writers can achieve." —Armando Lucas Correa, author of the international bestseller The German Girl
This information about The Lack of Light was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in Tbilisi in 1983, Nino Haratischwili is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. She is among the most acclaimed and widely-read authors of contemporary German literature. Her third novel, The Eighth Life (for Brilka), was translated into thirty languages and became an international bestseller. It won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Anna Seghers Prize, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The Lack of Light is her most recent novel. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.
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