The author Jaba Zarkua has a master’s degree in medical studies, a fact evident in his debut sci-fi novel The Reader Must Die. The author presents a dystopian, sullen world and questions the absolute eternities. Readers of this novel will find that nothing is unequivocal or unshakable in this world. Everything is defined by its context. Have you ever thought what would happen if Ray Bradbury’s world turned upside down? Have you ever thought that a literate man can be transformed into a zombie and the book itself can become the main weapon of dehumanisation? Have you ever thought that burning books could be a heroic act and a gesture of liberation? At the start of the year 2200 the world is split in two: it consists of a large Fascist empire and various tiny states, including Warmstadt (‘warm town’, which is the literal meaning of Tbilisi). In both the great empire and in post-revolutionary Warmstadt people are fed nationalist propaganda. The regimes are also similar in nature, but they differ in one feature: the government of Warmstadt is unique among the world’s dictatorial regimes, in that it uses books to attempt to make people comply and has in fact succeeded in turning its subjects into educated slaves and servants of the state. Everything seems to be going well, and the empire is in no hurry to annex Warmstadt. But it is the calm before the storm, because one of the empire’s best scientists is working on a perfidious plan – his theory of a controlled revolution, which is due to be put into practice in Warmstadt. If the experiment succeeds, the concept of the ‘free, rebellious man’ will be consigned to history.



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