Naduvny angel |
The Inflatable Angel. Novel. Sulakauri Publishers. Tiflis 2010. 206 pages
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Awards:
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2011 Best Georgian Novel of the Year
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Foreign rights:
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France, Germany |
At
exactly the same time as the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull
volcano filled Europe’s skies with ash causing airlines to cancel
flights, a young married couple, Niko and his wife Nino, are holding a
spiritualist session in a small apartment in Tiflis. Their aim is to
call up the spirit of George Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff was a famous
esoteric, writer, choreographer and composer in the early 20th century
of importance not only for Georgia, which the Turks and Persians also
used to refer to as "Gurdzhistan". During the October Revolution,
Gurdjieff and his followers left Russia and withdrew to the Caucasus,
and then to Tiflis in the autumn of 1919, where he opened his first
Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. When the political
situation in Georgia, too, began to destabilise, he set off on a
lecture tour to London, Berlin, Paris, and then later to North America,
too. Gurdzhiev died in France in 1949.
Now, however, in 21st-century Tiflis, Gurdjieff appears as a result of
the Gorosia’s invocation not only in spirit, but in flesh and blood.
And because he simply will not go away again, Niko and Nino ask their
Gurdjieff to help them in procuring funds. And so Gurdjieff uses all
the means available to a resurrected esoteric: kidnapping, blackmail,
hypnosis, metamorphosis, miracle cures.
Thanks to their miraculous godsend, the Gorosias move into their newly
acquired apartment and open a bakery with a café, while all around them
fantastic occurrences are taking place.