In my drafts folder there languishes an email to The Spectator pitching a letter from a then-forthcoming trip to Georgia. That was, alas, the spring of 2020. So when I saw Leo Vardiashvili’s debut novel billed as ‘a winding pursuit through the magic and mystery of returning to a lost Caucasian homeland’, I leapt at the vicarious travel opportunity.
Fleeing the disintegrating post-Soviet republic in the early 1990s, Irakli Donauri and his sons (though not his wife) arrive in London – Tottenham, specifically – where they are surprised to find ‘no top hats, no smog and no afternoon tea’. The boys grow up; two decades pass; their mother never joins them. Then one day, overwhelmed by homesickness, Irakli returns to Georgia – and promptly disappears. He instructs his sons not to follow him, which they naturally ignore, and thus begins the youngest, Saba’s, heroic-type quest, feeling his way back into a partially remembered country ‘like a blind man walking into a knife factory’.
Wearing his lucky Pink Floyd T-shirt, and nourished by ‘breadcrumbs’ (the book’s title nods to ‘Hansel and Gretel’ of course) as well as restorative soup, Saba progresses from the manic streets of Tbilisi – wild animals at large, thanks to a flood at the zoo – to the northern mountain fastnesses, through a landscape of burnt-out churches, blood-red rivers and dark, deadly forests.

Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in