Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020
Six romances,one revolution,the story of the century.
'That night Stasia took an oath,swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again,recalling the taste with all her senses,she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds,avert catastrophes,and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.'
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 centre 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. 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.
Publisher: Scribe PublicationsISBN: 9781913348298Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 56 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A harrowing,heartening and utterly engrossing epic novel...astonishing...A subtle and compelling translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (on the heels of a Georgian version earlier this year) should make this as great a literary phenomenon in English as it has been in German.'- Maya Jaggi,The Guardian
'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.'- Boyd Tonkin,The Financial Times
'Elegant...It 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.'- Catherine Taylor,The Economist
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