The overseas success of Georgian-German novelist Nino Haratischvili’s 900-page epic The Eighth Life (2019), which followed a single Georgian family through the tumult of the 20th century, has prompted the translation of this shorter, more intimate 2011 novel about an on-off sexual relationship between two adoptive siblings.
Set largely in Hamburg, it’s narrated by 36-year-old Stella, a slipshod journalist at “a medium-sized, mediocre newspaper” whose editor promises to put her in charge of the culture section if she can focus. But work – not to mention her husband and six-year-old son – soon go by the wayside when her ex-lover, Ivo, a war reporter raised as her brother, arrives in town after eight years incommunicado.
