PORA
BERIDZE LEVAN
Levan Beridze’s novel Pora is a multi-level prose piece about handicaps in individual life and history and the gap between the Western and Eastern worlds. Since 2008 Beridzehas also lived in Latvia, where his novel Pora became a big success in translation. The Latvian critic NormundsNaumanis in his brilliant essay about Fora calls thenovel a metaphoric and philosophical way of living writer’s life and life itself. Lars Daneman, the employee of a publishing house is assigned to Tbilisi, Georgia to research a „special city guide“: the city guide that doesn’t show any art or architectural sightseeing but describes people as a special point of interest instead. Noble Georgians as well as people of 60s are the main target for Lars to get in touch with. This is the ‘Handicap’ (Georgian Pora) that Lars gets. His predecessor could not fulfil the task as he was kidnapped by mysterious stranger, but later returned back home safely. Lars, who is of German-Russian origin himself with Spanish and Greek roots, begins a journey that later will become an exploration of his own personality.
`If you ask me who LevanBeridze's prose reminds me of, with whom there is a trace of affinity, I would put forward the names of Peter Handke and IlseAichinger. In Beridze's writing the transition from reality to dream, from the empirical to the fantastical, from the real to the unreal occurs suddenly, without preparation or warning. There is no continuum but instead a disjointed ‘sequence’ of pictures, not subject to any rational control or censorship, a strange stream of consciousness with some absurdist elements. Dream logic, the vision of dreams – or even nightmares – is at work here. The boundaries are blurred and unstable. Strange, rationally inexplicable situations and everyday happenings are blended. Between the lines there is a covert, veiled humour; similarly, the apparent seriousness is always accompanied by a hint of grotesque irony.`
Nodar Kakabadze, professor, translator
`I have now read one of the stories ... the pictures, the rhythm, the touch are distinctive, powerful, poetic – not just a product. Things start to float and have fresh outlines.`
Peter Handke, author
`Beridze is an ever greater aesthetic pleasure. … Only a master – or rather someone whose interest in what makes this world tick is profound and not pretended – can speak so poetically of profane things.`
Marjana Gaponenko, winner of the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize
`Although the novel is written in a patchwork style, the narrative thread never snaps. It is like a Büchner play written in contemporary prose.`
Normunds Naumanis, theatre and literary critic to Kultur
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