These stories from Georgia by the mysterious novelist Matěj Hořava provide a gripping account of an exotic country lying between Asia and Europe.

Literary fiction  |  English sample translation available

The story’s narrator is a Czech university teacher in Tbilisi, who lives in a block of flats for foreigners on the outskirts of the large city, in a closed-off world. He flees from his current situation to other regions, but also to his homeland, where he experiences his own stopovers and love. Matěj Hořava follows on successfully from his first autobiographical novel set in the Banat in Romania – his narrator continues to search for the essence of home and human nature in a fragmentary depiction of everyday life, using a lyrical prose which is similar to literary reportage.

Matěj Hořava (pseudonym, 1980) lives outside the Czech Republic and little is known about his life. His debut novel Pálenka: Prózy z Banátu (Distilled Spirit: Stories from the Banat, 2014) was received enthusiastically by Czech readers and critics and was awarded the Magnesia Litera for discovery of the year. The novel also won the 2015 Czech Book Award and has been published in five languages. In Mezipřistání (Stopover, 2020), his second novel, he follows on from his debut work by describing another region: Georgia.