~ Standard Hardcover
~ New Release - 2024
Still struggling twenty years later with the sacrifices their mother made to allow their father to free them from a war zone, Saba, his brother Sandro, and their father Irakli are haunted by the places and people they've left behind. When Irakli goes back to visit and subsequently vanishes, Sandro sets off to find out what happened, but when he goes missing too Saba must set off on an urgent search across his homeland . . .
Tender, raw, and funny, Hard by a Great Forest is a profound novel set amid rubble and rebuilding in a former Soviet land that follows a family who must rescue one another and put the past behind them after the fighting is over.
"Vardiashvili 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