Born in 1960 in Tbilisi, Zurab Lezhava started working in a state-owned printing house soon after graduating the Georgian Technical College. In 1982 he was imprisoned for 16 years for resistance activities against the Soviet militia. As a result, that traumatising experience is often to be seen in his prose and is reflected in the intensity of his writings. Zurab Lezhava is a self-made artist, recently called the ‘Pirosmani of Georgian prose’ (after the legendary Georgian self-taught painter Niko Pirosmani). The writer with his naive style, his life experience and his acute literary sense takes the reader to something unique, Zurab Lezhava’s world, mesmerizing and sometimes even too horrible to imagine. Nowadays Zurab Lezhava, along with his successful writing career, earns his living making and selling decorative wooden statues. He has published five books (a novel, a play and collections of short stories). Lezhava’s short stories have been translated and published in several anthologies: Anthology of contemporary Georgian short stories: A Man Zero - ADK Publishing 2015, Azerbaijan; Georgian Fiction: Literatura Georgiana - Instituto Tlaxcalteca de la Cultura 2015, Mexico; Contemporary Georgian Fiction - Dalkey Archive Press 2012, USA; Best European Fiction 2011 (short story Sex for Fridge) - Dalkey Archive Press 2011, USA.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• A Magic Handkerchief, Intelekti Publishing, 2013
• The Sincerity of Falsehood, Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2011
• Non Ex-changeable Coin, Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2010
• The Last Malakan, Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2010
• A Child Takes a Bite from a Persimmon in the Month of October, Bakur Sulakauri Publishing, 2009

LITERARY PRIZES AND AWARDS

• Literary prize GALA 2010 in category the best book for A Child Takes a Bite from a Persimmon in the Month of October... 
• 15 Best Short Stories 2009, BSP-Bakur Sulakauri Publishing literary award for Non Ex-changeable Coin

 

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