Description

* AN OBSERVER BEST NEW NOVELIST FOR 2024 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE 2024 *

‘A spellbinding achievement’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Poignant and often painfully comic’ OBSERVER
‘I gasped, laughed, and wept my way through it’ KHALED HOSSEINI

Saba’s father is missing, and the trail leads back to Tbilisi, Georgia.

Arriving in a city he has not seen for more than two decades, where escaped zoo animals prowl the streets and the voices of those left behind beckon him along a path of cryptic clues, Saba embarks on a quest that will lead him into the heart of a lost homeland.

This 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.

‘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

Publisher Review

A sensitive exploration of grief, memory, loss and the immigrant experience woven seamlessly into a propulsive narrative * Perspective magazine * 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 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 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 A wildly charming debut - propulsive, funny, and profound -- Elif Batuman Propulsive, profoundly moving and rich with humor 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