Hlava mého otce - Čtyři stenografické romány – Bočorišvili Jelena (2018)

The miraculous ointment, a tree in the middle of the room, a circus ventriloquist... but also wartime scarcity, Stalin's monuments, and the disappearance of people in the secret police's prisons - this is Georgia in the texts of Jelena Bočorišvili. They are characterized by a wide range of characters and events, yet are composed very tightly, which is why they are often referred to as 'stenographic novels.' Jelena Bočorišvili does not hide her original profession as a sports journalist and can literally depict several generations of typical Georgian families, complete with Caucasian color, in just a few dozen pages. In all four selected stenographic novels (The Head of My Father - Opera - Soviets - Faina), the author's characteristic poetics is evident, marked by a lyrical vocabulary, vivid characters, and a dreamlike atmosphere, which is, however, disrupted by a raw description of totalitarian reality. Bočorišvili draws inspiration for her texts from Georgia, not only from the second half of the 20th century but also from the pre-war period, which carries the traits of Black Sea exoticism at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.