Nino Haratischvili’s 'The Eighth Life': An Intergenerational Tale of Sisters, Sunflower Seeds and Cherry Liqueur

Review: Haratischvili, Nino. The Eighth Life: (for Brilka). Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. (London: Scribe Publications, 2019). [1] 

Can reconstructing the stories of our ancestors help us to better understand ourselves? What stories do people share and what secrets do they keep? How far do family ties stretch? How does one survive when social and political circumstances carry them down unforeseen paths? These are some of the questions author Nino Haratischvili grapples with in her epic 935-page novel about the multi-generational Jashi family, an upper-class Georgian family from a small town outside of Tbilisi. At once a novel of mis-adventure, love, and tragedy, Haratischvili frames the century-long story through the eyes of Niza, who is recording the stories of her family for her young niece and friend Brilka. As the reader, we follow Niza as she recounts the tales that her great-grandmother Stasia told her about the past five generations of Jashis. As each section of the seven-part novel progresses, we eagerly anticipate the introduction of new characters, and yearn for happy endings for those we have grown attached to. Amidst these stories, Haratischvili expertly weaves an informed historical account of life in Georgia during the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, as experienced by an extensive cast of children, grandmothers, soldiers, academics, KGB officers, activists, poets, rebels, and dancers. 

The novel is framed as a collection of stories passed down through over five generations of women. Narrated by Niza and addressed to Brilka, the book is intended as a gift of family history for the youngest Jashi woman. Through this complex narrative framing, Haratischvili emphasises the importance of family ties, the value of sisterhood, and the significance of inherited knowledge. The frequent asides in which Niza directly addresses Brilka, and the use of second-person narration, encourages readers to see through Brilka’s eyes and to feel as though they too are part of the Jashi family’s history. When Brilka enters the story as a primary character towards the end of the novel, the narration shifts to third-person, and the novel’s addressee – a girl of fourteen with a passion for dancing and an intense desire to know where she comes from – begins to take on a personality and voice of her own. 

Through these subtle narrative techniques, Haratischvili accomplishes the task of drawing in the reader and eliciting an emotional investment in the characters’ stories. In many ways, the novel reads as a long and liberating gossip session exchanged between sisters over a glass of cherry liqueur. The openness and vulnerability with which Niza invites her niece Brilka to explore her family’s past, which includes tales of trauma and loss, shows the mutual trust and affection that form between these two women as a result of their shared history. At times, one questions whether the young Brilka will be able to process the often violent stories which her aunt recounts. However, by the end of the novel, it is clear that Brilka has a right to these histories, because they are the ones that ferried the other women in her family through the currents of their lives to the point of her conception. 

Many reviewers have drawn comparisons between Haratischvili’s novel and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1867). These connections have been drawn because of the novel’s emphasis on the political and historical context of the character’s lives, the polyphonic narrative style, and the internal references to Tolstoy’s novels. However, the thoughtful reader should consider the problematic implications of comparing or equating a distinctly Georgian narrative – which critically reflects on the history of Georgia’s subjugation under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union – to a classic Russian novel. Furthermore, Haratischvili’s novel focalises women’s voices and their perspectives on war, family, and nation, contrasting significantly with the largely male perspectives through which Tolstoy’s narrative, one firmly rooted in the patriarchal canon, is told. Indeed, Haratischvili’s playful and imaginative language, the fantastical elements of the novel, and the specific focus on the lives and experiences of the women in the Jashi family is perhaps more reminiscent of Isabel Allende’s multigenerational magical realist novel The House of the Spirits (1982), or Laura Esquivel’s novella Like Water for Chocolate (1989), in which the main character has the ability to imbue her cooking with her desires and intentions, giving the dishes mystical properties similar to those of the hot chocolate that appears as a mysterious thread linking the tragedies and events that occur in The Eighth Life. 

Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. Despite the graphic nature of the more traumatic moments in the novel, the reader is bolstered by the undeniable hope and support that permeates the relationships between the Jashi women and provides them with the strength to endure their social and political circumstances. This is most acutely illustrated by the account of Kitty’s return home after she endures brutal and violent questioning at the hands of the NKVD. Afterwards, Kitty finds solidarity and understanding in her relationship with her aunt, Christine, who is a survivor herself. While sharing her story, Kitty runs her hands over Christine’s face, a face scarred by an acid attack, ‘in the hope that by studying Christine’s map she would be able to create her own. A map of her own that would show her how to go on living. A survival map.’ [2] By telling these stories the narrator provides Brilka with her own survival map, one made up of the lifelines belonging to the women of her past. 

Another parallel between Haratischvili’s novel and the work of feminist writers like Isabel Allende is the undercurrent of unexplained, magical, and uncanny elements. As mentioned earlier, the family’s tantalising and indulgent hot chocolate recipe, invented by Stasia’s father in the early 20th century, is more than just the secret to his success. It becomes a part of the Jashi family lore, made by those seeking comfort in times of strife, and feared for its tendency to ‘bring about calamity’ in the lives of those who taste it.[3] This curse, coupled with the fact that much of the novel’s plot is triggered by events that occur at a Gatsby-esque masquerade ball in the lively and colourful hills of Tbilisi, lends the narrative a carnivalesque tone, foregrounding the absurd, surreal and humorous in the tale. These fantastical elements are particularly present in the characterisation of the family’s matriarch, Niza’s great-grandmother Stasia. For example, Stasia’s introduction in the story is framed as a mythologised incident of birth: 

She came into the world – so I was told – in the coldest winter at the dawn of the twentieth century. She had a headful of hair; you could have plaited it, they said. And with her first cry she was, in fact, already dancing. They said she laughed as she cried, as if she were crying more to reassure the adults, her parents, the midwives, the country doctor, not because she had to. And they said that with her first steps she was already describing a pas de deux. And that she loved chocolate, always. And that before she could say ‘Father’ she was babbling Madame Butterfly. [4] 

Stasia’s eccentric nature grows throughout the century long narrative, reflected by the magical and anthropomorphic wildness of the fairy-tale dwellings she inhabits. She seems to grow younger and younger with each passing year, is known for her lucidity and her quick tongue, and is eager to react with stubbornness and profanity to her son’s controlling nature and the events of the world. Stasia’s clarity and youthful spirit are offset by the strange power she develops to see and talk to the dead, which grows as, one-by-one, her loved ones join the ranks of the ghosts. Because of the way that Haratischvili lightly dances back and forth across the line of magical storytelling and realism, by the end of the novel the reader is left wondering if hot chocolate can really kill and whether they will one day see the dead playing cards in their garden. 

The Eighth Life is a masterful mixing of fact and fiction and a window into Georgian history and culture – complete with images of Tbilisi, sunflower seeds, chacha, and horses native to the Georgian steppe. It is approachable for readers unacquainted with the history of the Soviet Union, the Caucasus, and the Cold War, but offers unique insight for others with greater familiarity. The references and accounts of real-life figures such as ‘The Generalissimus’, and ‘The Little Big Man,’ are integrated with the stories of fictional characters, such as Giorgi Alania and Konstantin Jashi, who in the novel also occupy significant government positions in the Soviet Union. Additionally, each chapter begins with a quote, taken from a variety of historical sources including Vladimir Lenin, Soviet poster slogans, Anton Chekhov, David Bowie, and The Taming of the Shrew. The attentive reader will notice the occasional instances when Haratischvili attributes one of these epigraphs to a fictional character in the novel, such as the exiled Patti Smith-esque singer songwriter Kitty Jashi. Through this intertextuality, the author seamlessly integrates her fictional characters into the cultural and political history of the 20th-century, and leaves the reader wondering where the history ends, and the fiction begins. 

The final page of this seven-part story contains only one line: the chapter title ‘Book VIII: Brilka.’ [5] This open-ended conclusion invites the young Brilka to continue the saga of the Jashi family with her own ongoing story. Thus, Haratischvili’s novel, so often about pain and loss, ends as one full of hope and love, leaving the reader with the intense desire to explore their own family history, and a deeper understanding of Georgian history and culture. 

[1] This translation is translated from the original German. Readers should note that there are some phonetic inconsistencies between the English spellings and the Georgian names and terms. 

[2] Nino Haratischvili, The Eighth Life: (for Brilka), trans. by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (London: Scribe Publications, 2019), p. 227.

[3] Haratischvili, p. 49. 

[4] Haratischvili, pp. 16-17. 

[5] Haratischvili, p. 935.