Zaza Burchuladze

Naduvny angel The Inflatable Angel. Novel. Sulakauri Publishers. Tiflis 2010. 206 pages
Awards: 2011 Best Georgian Novel of the Year
Foreign rights: 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.

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