A multitude of images and stories set in different periods of time surge from normality into a Dostoyevskian psychological abyss, and then return to their starting point. In the interval, the human psyche has been explored thoroughly and deeply, and human suffering described in a breath-taking way. The characters are very cleverly portrayed and then obscured: Rusudan and her granddaughter’s memories are interrupted by those of other characters. Each person speaks his or her own name and explains his or her own reasons and sufferings. Outside the general context, all these aspects find their own place. For example one character, Spiridon, had an unhappy and cruel childhood and yet the fact remains that he has committed an unforgivable crime. As for the structure of the novel, it is quite original too, as the story is built like a puzzle, with pieces inserted at different times in successive layers. Each time a missing piece of information helps to complete a mysterious picture. All these pieces are set out with such ingenuity that we are led to intuit the rest of the story. For example, the scene when Gio’s dead body is found leads us to guess the coming ending’s inevitability. This kaleidoscopic structure is firmly maintained in a striking unity of time and space. The background of the novel is the arrival of the Bolsheviks in Georgia and the repression which came with it. In 1921, after the exile of the Georgian government to France, the Red Army invaded the country which lost its independence, while the population was persecuted with the worst peaks in 1924, the early 1930s and 1937. These periods of persecution organized by the new Soviet power could be treated as a separate subject. But in this novel they are just background preparing the foreground where feelings, such as Chiko’s heart-breaking story, are analysed with deep insight. He was little boy whose parents were arrested and persecuted in unknown circumstances for crimes they never committed. This is why this novel can be considered a masterpiece of Georgian literature: Zaira Arsenishvili’s art is able to transcend a terrible reality and rise to a higher level of insight into the human soul and heart.

‘I don’t know, technically, how long it took to write Oh World, but once can sense that this book is the novel of Zaira Arsenishvili’s life, an entire lifetime of heart felt experience and reflection; that is why Oh World is so complete: a fine drinking cup full of the best Kakhetian wine, whose container is a work of art, with traditional ornamentation and patterns. But the content is even more important, its wine being comparable to the Saviour’s blood.’   

Giorgi Lobjanidze, poet, literary critic

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