IN DEPTH
Guest of Honour Author interview
past 40 years of Georgian history, with the Russian bear very much ever-present in the background. Yet, perhaps the most excoriating passages are aimed at his fellow Georgians. Kikodze says: “I wrote the book this way because it is so uninteresting if you say, ‘Russia is a bad country, it is a Mafia state and they are all bad people.’ I think the moral difficulties of collaboration are so much more interesting than viewing someone, or some country, purely as the enemy. That’s why in ‘Southern Elephant’, and most of my fiction, I tend to write about everyday experiences, because even the big political issues are only experienced on a personal level.”
Kikodze archly points out that many Georgians were fully engaged with the Soviet state, and at the highest levels—Stalin, famously, was Georgian, as was Uncle Joe’s right-hand man, the notorious secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria. And even when the break of the USSR came in the 1990s, Kikodze says his fellow countrymen did not all exactly join hands in harmony: “I think it was something of a test for our societ, and one we did not pass. We had achieved independence, but we were not really ready for it. It was the time of angry nationalism, civil war, ethnic conflicts and war trauma.”
Lofty comparisons
“Southern Elephant” is definitely a cit novel, and in reviews it has been compared to the heavyweight urban fiction of the 20th-century modernist masters James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Kikodze has had plent of time for his research, having lived in Tbilisi for most of his 46 years. His education has been eclectic, first geting a degree in Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Tbilisi State Universit, and later going to the national theatre and film school at Shota Rustaveli State Universit. (Rustaveli was a medieval Georgian poet, and is one of the giants of the country’s literature.) Though “Southern Elephant” is Kikodze’s first novel, he has been publishing short stories, essays and articles since the tender age of 21, when he won a literary prize for short fiction. Despite the
Today, Georgian literature can be big and epic, or it can be small and personal. There is a diversity that we haven’t had for so long
relatively early success, he “never had a real call to write when I was younger, though I read a lot. Perhaps the notion of becoming a professional writer made me feel uncomfortable.” He goes on to explain that that uneasiness was not just the “am I good enough?” angst that many a writer experiences, but the cold, hard fact that “it is almost impossible to make a living solely as a professional author in Georgia”. So, to this day, he hustles. In addition to the writing, he has worked extensively in the theatre and film industry, in a variet of roles. Art-house film buffs might know him from the anthology film “Tbilisi, I Love You” (with appearances from Hollywood tpes such as
30 10th October 2018
Georgian Chacters 12th October, 11 a.m., Guest of Honour Pavilion
Kikodze steps up in this event, which is part of a series in which Georgian authors tell stories that are associated with the country’s alphabet.
Get Together: Georgia, a Literary Journey 12th October, 3.30 p.m., Guest of Honour Pavilion
Alongside authors Nino Haratischwili, Ulla Lenze and Irma Tavelidze, Kikodze will discuss the titular travel journal, published in 2018 through a link-up of the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, the Georgian National Book Center and the Goethe-Institut Georgien. The anthology details travellers’ perspectives on the different regions, culture, nature and traditions of the Guest of Honour nation.
Malcolm McDowell and Ron Perlman), for which he wrote part of the screenplay; or his turn as one as the main roles in “Blind Dates”, a 2013 festival circuit hit. He has been acting quite a bit more of late: “I really enjoy it, even more so if I haven’t writen the play or the screenplay, because I don’t have so much of a heavy obligation to the work.”
On the climb
And there are his less artistic endeavours, too. In his late teens and early twenties, Kikodze caught the hiking bug, a passion which continues to this day. He has writen three books on walking in Georgia’s mountains and national parks and a significant part of his income comes from his work as a guide for eco-tourism expeditions. There is a bit of irony that some Georgian writers might have actually been a tad beter off financially in Soviet times. If one passed muster with the authorities (although doing so was dicey, and the criteria ever-changing) there were opportunities for state support. Kikodze says: “The system did give us several great authors in the Soviet era. But because of the restrictions, they oſten had to limit themselves to historical novels. So there was something of a sameness about the work that was being produced. Of course, those books were oſten about the present day, but you had to read between the lines. Today, Georgian literature can be big and epic, or it can be small and personal. There is a diversit that we haven’t had for so long, and we can finally face up to our own country’s problems.”
Published in 2016 by Sulakauri, Archil Kikodze’s Southern Elephant won the IliaUni Literary Prize for Best Novel in 2017, and the Litera awards’ Best Novel of the Year. Rights have been sold in German (Ullstein Buchverlage), Azerbaijanian, Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian at the time The Bookseller went to press.
KIKODZE RIGHT IN ART-HOUSE FILM ‘BLIND
DATES’ (2013)
Kikodze at FBF
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48