Mineral Jazz is a novel by Zaza Burchuladze which brought the author recognition of wide audience and critics alike and won one of the highly praised Tsinandali Award as the best novel of 2003. This is a Georgian postmodern novel or an anti-novel how the work is often characterized. According to some critics Mineral Jazz starts as a circus tragic-comedy turns into a slow flowing detective and ends as carnival fireworks. The absence of any storyline creates impression of jazz improvisation and offers to the reader multiple plot options that requires reading between the lines.

'Zaza’s prose is pure psychedelics; one could even say of the latest edition that it belongs to the so called “psychedelic realism”. Reading Burchuladze is akin to listening to jazz music. Music emerges as if by itself within these crazy burnt-out lines and sentences. One would only need to breathe it in, and then listen to its sound'.

Gazeta.ru (Russia)

EXTRACT
Translated into English by Maya Kiasashvili 

In the beginning there was the word, followed by irreversible consequences. And then one day the Moscow Circus arrived to Tbilisi.

One of the leading Georgian newspapers of the time wrote about the tour: ‘Tbilisi hasn’t seen an as impressive spectacle for quite a while.’ But it was a lie because Tbilisi had never seen anything like that, let alone for a while. However, all this is not important compared to the fact that during the Moscow Circus performance Count Pier Orlov, the old conjuror, died in his dressing room, in front of his mirror.

Clearly, Pier Orlov was no more a count than Yuri Gagarin was a maharaja. It was a simple stunt used on the billboards to attract more spectators. His skin was olive colored, he had high cheekbones and narrow, Kirgiz eyes; in a way he resembled Madame Chauchat. Definitely not a count, Orlov truly was a magician; he used to appear on the arena wrapped in a blue velvet clock embroidered with stars as big as fists and golden crescents. First of all, he would greet the audience with a deep bow, bending in half until his forehead nearly touched the tip of his Oriental slippers. Then he would circle the arena, holding his palms open, just like Christ, for everyone to see. And finally, he would roll up his sleeves to assure even the most suspicious spectator he wasn’t hiding anything up his sleeve. Standing there, with rolled-up sleeves and open palms, he would suddenly conjure a dove or a watermelon, or anything else for that matter. But it wasn’t only pulling things out of nowhere, because the Count could perform things others wouldn’t even think of. For instance, he could fry an egg on his palm, or produce a frightful lion and if the beast roared, he could pull out its tongue with a slight turn of his hand and twist it around his little finger...(See PDF)

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