A young Georgian writer Irakli is commissioned by a successful businessman to write his memories. In order to make a better acquaintance with the businessman’s life, the writer moves into his apartment, where a somewhat unusual relationship develops between him and the businessman’s teenage daughter. However, instead of writing the memories, Irakli starts to work on his own novel entitled “The New Book”. The main character of “The New Book” is himself – a young Georgian writer Irakli, who is commissioned by a successful businessman to write his memories. The life of the real writer gradually blends with the life of the writer in the novel and the boundary between the real author of "The New Book“ and its protagonist becomes more and more blurred. Who is the author and who is the character of the novel? Which novel describes reality and which is fiction? And is reality better than fiction?

EXTRACT
Translated into English by Ekaterine Machitidze

It sure is silly to feel jealousy for a character in fiction. However, Eliso knows what the quill means to me and what my head is at when I am writing. I always try not to talk about it openly. I don't like pompousness, but it's impossible to speak about important things without excessive emotionality. Think of Christians and Moslemn... Even Buddhists are that overly dramatic when they are explaining the essence of Nirvana to anyone and regardless that this absolute blessedness has nothing in common with histrionics.
It is true that literature is not a religions In all cases, I do not consider it to be a religion. It cannot save a human soul. The maximum that can be reached by literature in the field of salvation is saving from the tedious ennui experienced by men. Literature is one of the worldly enjoyments. People say that we enjoy eating and sleeping, but they are quite wrong because eating and sleeping make necessity and human pleasure starts where the need ends.
Literature (to be more precise, writing and pencraft) is the greatest worldly enjoyment for me. When I cannot write, it tortures me and when I write I always feel good. The whole pompousness is going to start now: When I write, I'm deeply absorbed in what I have already written. If anyone dies in a book, I always die with him. If anyone comes, I come, too... They are happy and I am happy. Eliso knows about it and is especially jealous as I act under my own name (Irakli Andghuladz), in the "new book". (There are really fewer things that I can do now for I have been walking up and down in the room of Alexander Japaridze, checking some books and waiting for the appearance of Mr. Japaridze).

* * *

We got married a month later. Now we were married, we were a family and we were husband and wife. All three expressions express the true sense of a married couple.
My father took a vacation and arrived in Tbilisi by airplane. My mother was there, too. She always used to be by his side and they are side by side now, too.
My father looked at her closely and winked at me. He liked Eliso. The thing is that the man liked Eliso's father even more than his daughter-in-law. It was at our wedding party: My father was somewhat drunk and started to talk about physics or more exactly, about the physical origin of the Universe:
"Everything began with an outburst", my father said. He started to prove the theory. It is a good job that there was no blackboard or chalk there. He would start to derive formulas right at the wedding party.
Eliso's father, Mr. Zurab (I addressed him this way until he died) was the most attentive listener and my father paid heed to it... (See PDF)

 

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