NAMED ONE OF THE OBSERVER’S 10 BEST NEW NOVELISTS FOR 2024The stakes could barely be higher in
Leo Vardiashvili’s propulsive page-turner…It’s a spellbinding achievement.—The Financial Times
Has a commercial-fiction spring in its step.… Vardiashvili also has captured the winking
world-weary humor and magic-realist touches that mark a lot of literature from Europe’s
war-torn corners.” —Los Angeles Times This novel annihilated me.... Left my heart bruised and
battered and aching for more. —Khaled Hosseini #1 New York Times bestselling author of The
Kite Runner Tender and raw and funny.” —Colum McCann National Book Award winning author of Let
the Great World Spin Propulsive funny and profound.—Elif Batuman Pulitzer Prize finalist and
bestselling author of The Idiot A book like no other from an imagination like no other.”
—Andrew Sean Greer Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is LostAmid rubble and rebuilding in
a former Soviet land one family must rescue one another and put the past to rest: a stirring
novel about what happens after the fighting is overSaba is just a child when he flees the
fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother Sandro and father
Irakli for asylum in England. Two decades later all three men are struggling to make peace
with the past haunted by the places and people they left behind. When Irakli decides to return
to Georgia pulled back by memories of a lost wife and a decaying but still beautiful homeland
Saba and Sandro wait eagerly for news. But within weeks of his arrival Irakli disappears and
the final message they receive from him causes a mystery to unfold before them: I left a trail
I can’t erase. Do not follow it.” In a journey that will lead him to the very heart of a
conflict that has marred generations and fractured his own family Saba must retrace his
father’s footsteps to discover what remains of their homeland and its people. By turns savage
and tender compassionate and harrowing Hard by a Great Forest is a powerful and ultimately
hopeful novel about the individual and collective trauma of war and the indomitable spirit of
a people determined not only to survive but to remember those who did not.
