may these ashes be light

Tbilisi surged with creative genius in the early 20th Century, as anointed poets, political thinkers, and moody writers animated the capital of the small country of Georgia. Freedom from imperial Russia in 1917 saw a city soon brimming with cultural cafes, political movements, and creative output – jubilation filled the streets with the first free and fair elections of the new democratic republic.

The Soviet invasion of 1921 dashed all hopes of independence. By the end of the 1930s, the once vibrant creative community was wiped from the earth by Stalin’s Great Terror, administered personally by Stalin’s sadistic henchman, Lavrentiy Beria. The best minds of a generation were destroyed and passed largely unnoticed by the world into the night.

Collected in this anthology are but a few of these missing voices. This is the poetry and prose of Georgia from the Soviet Shadow. They have been absent from the canon of World Literature for far too long.