"I miss Georgia even when I’m in Georgia" — Leo Vardiashvili on his debut novel

Georgian-born author Leo Vardiashvili was just twelve when he left his homeland for the United Kingdom, parting from his mother, the Sololaki district of Tbilisi, and the only life he had known. Yet an invisible thread continued to bind him to Georgia, quietly pulling him back over the years. Now, he has emerged as a powerful new voice in English-language literature, with his debut novel, Hard by a Great Forest, becoming an international bestseller and earning praise from The Guardian and The New York Times.

Translated into twenty languages, the novel stands as a testament to Vardiashvili’s enduring love for Georgia and for the art of storytelling itself, with its layered narrative, allegorical depth, and fairy-tale resonance.

At its center is Saba, a young man who left Georgia as a child and now returns to Tbilisi in search of his missing father and brother. What unfolds is a tale of exile and return, of fractured memory and quiet resilience — woven with moments of adventure, sorrow, and the lingering ache of absence.

"Hard by a Great Forest" Add to Bag

In many ways, Vardiashvili picks up where writers like Nino Haratischwili left off, offering international readers a layered view of Georgia’s complex history. Yet his voice is unmistakably his own: he reimagines Tbilisi through surreal anachronisms, bending time and place to craft a dreamlike, yet emotionally grounded, narrative. Through this lens, he examines war, displacement, and the enduring pull of home and of family ties that refuse to loosen.

In conversation with The Diary, Vardiashvili reflects on his debut novel and the deeply personal experiences that shaped it.

Leo, how did you remain emotionally connected to Georgia while writing from afar?

Leo: Initially, before I could return to Georgia, my emotional connection was the simple but painful act of missing my homeland, my friends and my family. My absence from Georgia was over fifteen years long, but my homecoming was the bitter-sweet event what made me start writing the novel. Staying emotionally connected to Georgia while I wrote the novel in the UK was relatively simple. Most of my family still lives in Georgia, including my mother, Tina. Therefore, I spent a lot of time in Tbilisi and in Georgia, as I wrote the novel.

In part this served as research for the novel and in part it was a process of me rediscovering my homeland as an adult. Lastly, I would add that all Georgian immigrants feel, deep down, an inexplicable longing for their homeland – regardless of how long ago they left, or how disconnected they’ve been. The feeling of longing for home is still always there, demanding attention. I doubt this is a uniquely Georgian phenomenon – all immigrants must feel this, all over the world. But as a Georgian, I can only tell you about my experience. I miss Georgia, even when I’m in Georgia.

To what extent does the novel draw from your own life experience?

Leo: I left Tbilisi and arrived in the UK in 1995 and did not return to Georgia until 2011. I assumed that was enough time for me to forget most of what I remembered about Georgia. I was only twelve years old when I left, after all. I thought I was going on a
holiday, with the added bonus of seeing some family along the way.

As soon as I stepped off the airplane though, I realised I was totally wrong. Even the smell of Tbilisi was so instantly familiar that I was overwhelmed with a flood of memories and emotion.

The protagonist, Saba, goes through very similar emotions upon his arrival in Tbilisi. However, unlike me, he arrives in Tbilisi to search for his father and brother who havemmysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, the city zoo animals have escaped, and the police seem to be ominously interested in Saba’s arrival too. Luckily, in my own personal experience, I didn’t have to contend with such bizarre adventures, while following strange, cryptic clues in order to track down missing family members. My homecoming was a far simpler story. The novel itself is only lightly autobiographical. While some anecdotes, stories and fairytales are from my own childhood, most of the events and characters are fictional. This is a fictional work of literature, after all.

What does “home” mean to you now and did writing this novel shift that understanding in any way?

Leo: Georgia is home for me. Most of my extended family live in Georgia. I visit at least two or three times a year. Of course, obviously, I’ve also built a second home in the UK, where I spend a large part of my time.

I am hugely proud of my Georgian roots. Therefore, when writing the novel, it was crucial for me to capture the spirit of Tbilisi, and Georgia at large. I wrote the Hard by a Great Forest for an English-speaking readership – simply because I could not have possibly anticipated it being translated into 20 languages, including Georgian. But because the novel was written for an English-speaking audience, I took painstaking care to convey the essential character of Georgia. I wanted to introduce Georgia to those who weren’t familiar with it.

While Georgian readers will notice some factual inaccuracies (the date of the zoo flooding for example), I tried to stay unwaveringly accurate in describing the emotional feel and atmosphere of Georgia and its people. The entire novel is my love letter to Tbilisi and to Georgia. Because I believe Georgia to be noteworthy. We have suffered (and are still suffering) multiple invasions, upheavals and occupations – both ancient and recent. Yet here we still stand.

Is there a particular work of Georgian literature that resonates deeply with you?

Leo: I try to read as much Georgian literature as my time allows. This was especially true when writing my novel – I wanted to be immersed in the Georgian language. Some of my favourite writers include Chiladze, Babluani, Turashvili, Morchiladze and I’m hoping to discover many more. I would like to add that it is a crime that our literature, of such quality, often isn’t more widely translated. I hope to do something about that.

Was there a particular scene or character that proved especially emotional or challenging for you to write?

Leo: There’s often a disconnection between what I, as the writer, feel proud of within the novel and what the readers like the most. There are obvious emotional points in the novel which were difficult to write. Not because these events happened to me directly, but because I know such events have happened to other Georgians.

For me as a writer, the most difficult character to write was the police detective. I struggled with this for a long time. I expended a lot of effort on trying to make him a human being, instead of simply a crude antagonist – a basic plot device to inject danger into the story. When I found a way to humanise him and give him a compelling, heartbreaking reason for his actions, I was overjoyed!

Do you feel you’ve inherited an emotional weight from previous generations through stories told, silences kept, or burdens passed down?

Leo: There is an unsettling paradox that preoccupied me as I was writing the novel. In any war or civil unrest there are casualties and refugees. These casualties and refugees are counted, logged and often represented in newspapers and history books as numbers. But, the higher the casualty or refugee numbers are, the less they mean to us, the individuals reading. It’s difficult to wrap your mind around trauma on such a big scale.

Instead of trying to make sense of the trauma Georgia has been through as a whole, within my novel, I tried to explore what such trauma can do to a single family, only a handful of people. How burdens, pain, and silences are handed down from generation to generation like a family keepsake. This is the central theme of the novel. But it isn’t only the negative that is inherited. There are also inherit positive things – our fierce resilience, our love, our humour, our loyalty, our hospitality. These things don’t come to us out of thin air, but are handed from generation to generation, from Georgian parent to Georgian child.

Which part of the book feels most inherently Georgian to you and is there a line that, in your view, captures the spirit of the country best?

Leo: I spent the first twelve years of my life in Sololaki. It’s the place that was the most immediately accessible to me in my memories. As a result, I tried to write Sololaki in a way that would feel like the reader could run their fingers along its walls, smell the air and see the sights. I would add that it breaks my heart to see some of the things happening to Sololaki these days. I’m talking about the lack of care for the buildings and the district in general. Sololaki (like many other districts in Tbilisi) is a gem – but it will not last forever without
careful attention. It needs to be preserved by caring hands.

When you first arrived in London, how did you hold on to your memories of Georgia?

Leo: When I first arrived in London I hoped and prayed to be deported as soon as possible. All my thoughts and feeling bent towards Tbilisi and my home within it. Inevitably, as I became involved with English schools, English friends and all the things teenagers go through, the feeling faded. The credit for keeping my Georgian language, history and heritage goes entirely to my parents – Ketino, Malkhaz and Tina. They are responsible for keeping me Georgian – as much as that was possible all the way from the UK.

Is there one memory of Georgia that has remained vivid over the years, no matter where life has taken you?

Leo: My grandma, Nina, was simply a miracle of a woman. As is my mother, Tina. In those dark times in the early 1990s, when life was at its worst in Tbilisi, they would take me, and most of the kids on our street to the botanical garden every weekend. Tirelessly, they spoke to us as though we were already adults, taught us valuable wisdoms that would take us years to fully understand, and read to us priceless literature in the garden. I suspect many Georgians have such memories of those dark times made a little brighter by loving parents or grandparents.

And finally, can you tell us a bit about your next book? What can you share with us at this stage?

Leo: All I can say is that the next book does have Georgian characters in it, is partly set in Georgia, but is not a sequel or a prequel. It’s an entirely new novel, centred around the theme of how good people sometimes can find themselves doing the most awful things, for reasons they believe to be good.