30 years has passed since Irakli Lomouri’s first story was published in Georgian literary journal. The author decided to bring together all his most interesting works and publish under the title Auto-Obituary. Irakli Lomouri’s writing style and manner can be shortly described as ironical- absurd, but in reality his stories are much deeper and colorful and is hard to place in the frames of any genre. The Collection Auto-Obituary  is a vivid confirmation of this. In the stories, included in the collection, the readers can experience some features of psychological prose, fantasy, surrealism, mystics and literary fairy tales, sometimes social absurd enriched with brilliant humor and grotesque. Stories are phantasmagoric, interesting, attracting and easily readable and the end is often absolutely unexpected. In spite of the fact that protagonists are often trapped in comic, absurd, and no way out situations the author never taunts them. There is one main characteristic that bonds all the works by Irakli Lomouri: author’s compassion to human being and his excellent craft to successfully make the reader feel the same compassion towards his characters. The collection includes one of the most well-known works of the author - An Incident. The story unfolds an extraordinary adventure of a camel caravan with Bedouins, that one fine day passed through the rail-track of the Tbilisi Subway. 19 individuals waiting for a subway train witnessed this incident. The story is written precisely in style of a documentary prose, therefore, after its publication, a rumor was leaked that the incident was real and for years many believed that a caravan really went through the subway track. Though the author himself describes An Incident as a story about escaping totalitarian country, where the author's alter ego - a 20 years old student, decides to follow the caravan and to explore the parallel world.

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Translated into English by Guram Abashidze

TURNING MOSCOW INTO A RADIOACTIVE DESERT, OR DEMISE OF AN HOURGLASS 

Hense, I drain piece by piece - true, very slowly, but sooner or later I will be emptied, won’t I?!
I am an hourglass.
And who will invert me then?
I look around. Everybody is in deep sleep. Kofi Annan-Iashvili heavily sibilant in sleep - like beats of tomtom. Only Buratino was awake. But I do not rely on him. He will not turn me over. He will not take this trouble. He is kind of a wooden… Not ade,..quate. Quite not ade,..goose! Ha-ha-ha!
Window pane placed in iron-barred frame was half painted in white. Bright moon light bursting from the window shamelessly mingled with a hardly flickering colorless feedback of twenty-five-watt electric bulb that sired fairly thin light. Instead of regular wooden door in the ward there was a grating concocted and welded of iron rods, painted in white and embedded in the solid iron frame - deadbolted with shining Chinese door lock.
‘Is there anybody on earth more serene and innocuous than we are? What’s the use of these iron rods and latches?!’ - I stare, wonder and ponder to boot as to how many granules are there left.
Suddenly, my mind widely opened – we are under protection! Not to be kidnapped! Dark forces! That is exactly these metal rods and latches are for. We are rare creatures stuck together. Most unique. The last hope and buttress of the world... (See PDF)                                                                          

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Translated into German byIunona Guruli

DAS EREIGNIS

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