'Hard by a Great Forest' is a novel about returning home decades after fleeing war

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

The story of Saba, the protagonist of Leo Vardiashvili's novel Hard by a Great Forest, is much like the author's own. A young boy flees the Soviet Republic of Georgia with his father and brother as the country is ravaged by a war. Decades later, when his father goes back to their homeland and promptly disappears, Saba must face his family's past – and immense loss – in an effort to find him. In today's episode, Vardiashvili tells NPR's Scott Simon about being separated from his own family, and the feeling of time-travel he felt when he finally made his way back to Georgia.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It is both inspiring and a little scary,
0:08.9	how well humans can adapt to horrible conditions, particularly children. Leo Vardia Shively left his
0:14.9	home country of Georgia as it was undergoing a civil war, but not before he and his buddies invented
0:20.6	a game that involved collecting
0:22.4	shell casings on their way home from school. The main character in his debut novel leads a similar
0:27.4	life. The book is titled Hard by a Great Forest, and Vardius Chivly spoke to NPR Scott
0:32.2	Simon about it and about how Georgians tend to laugh at adversity because they have to.
0:38.3	That's after the break.
0:40.4	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:45.2	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
0:51.8	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people
0:55.1	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR
1:01.3	app or wherever you get your podcasts. Leo Vardyosvili's new novel is about a family that's trying
1:08.6	to find themselves again through the thick forests of loss history,
1:13.2	and yes, fearsome woods. Sabah and Sandra come to London with their father, Iraqly in 1992.
1:20.8	A civil war breaks out in Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union. The author sets the scene
1:27.1	from the very first.
1:28.3	Where's Eka? We must have asked a thousand times.
1:31.3	Our mother stayed so that we could escape.
1:34.3	You see, war trumps most things.
1:37.3	You'll find that a volume of AK-47 rounds fired right down the street will override almost any other concern.
1:43.3	We heard gunfire by night
	...

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