Observations:

The Eighth Life (for Brilka) is the 2020 winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. For more about the prize, read here.

I read this wonderful book whilst away on holiday with my husband, I was 3-4 months pregnant, we were on a road trip around Cambodia: visiting Chhlong/Kratie, Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri. This was December 2020, we had moved to Cambodia months earlier amidst the madness of Covid 19. It is a tome of a book, at over 900 pages, just as well we were driving! I had bought the book some months ago, but the shortlist announcement was the impetus I needed to start reading it. Just as I was three quarters of the way through the book, the book was crowned the winner.

I loved this book, in quite a profound way. I found myself thinking of its characters and savouring reading the book. On the last night of our holiday, I sat outside wrapped up (as Mondulkiri gets chilly) against the cold and the bugs, and finished the last chapter. I felt a real sadness that my time with these characters had come to an end.

In a Nutshell:

The Eighth life (for Brilka) is a family epic/saga. The book is split into eight chapters, each chapter dedicated to a different member of the family. The narrator of the story is Niza Jashi. In her 30s, she is the fifth of six generations of the Jashi family, whose saga she notes down in Germany for her 12-year-old niece Brilka (where the Georgian-born Haratischvili actually lives). The story begins with Niza’s great-grandmother Stasia, before moving on to her beautiful and tragic younger sister, Christine, then Stasia’s son Kostya, who follows his father into the navy; and Stasia’s daughter Kitty, who flees Georgia for London to become a dissident singer-songwriter. Kostya’s wayward daughter Elene is mother to Niza and her sister Daria. The eighth chapter is for Brilka, Daria’s daughter.  

From Tbilisi and Moscow to London and Berlin, the lives of this family are vividly intertwined with global events, from the rise and fall of the Soviet empire to the siege of Leningrad and the Prague spring. All (but one) of the chapters center on women in the family. 

Themes:

Family, identity, chocolate, loss, love, revolutions and many more.

An Observation:

The Eighth Life (for Brilka), was originally published in German in 2014, this beautiful translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin comes just after a Georgian version was published. In her review, Maya Jaggi says “this English translation should make this as great a literary phenomenon in English as it has been in German – most recently winning the 2018 Bertolt Brecht prize.” Read Maya Jaggi’s review here.

A Quote: 

“I owe them to you because you deserve the eighth life. Because they say the number eight represents infinity, constant recurrence. I am giving my eight to you. A century connects us. A red century. Forever and eight. Your turn, Brilka.”

Details

Book: The Eighth Life (for Brilka)

Author: Nino Haratischvili

Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theater director. She has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve. In 2010, her debut novel Juja. In its German edition, The Eighth Life was a bestseller, and won the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize 2018.

Translators: Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin

Charlotte Collins studied English literature at Cambridge University, and worked as an actor and radio journalist in Germany and the UK before becoming a literary translator. Collins is the co-chair of the UK Translators Association and a literary translator (German). Her translation of Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

Ruth Martin is a freelance literary translator whose work includes a wide range of novels, short stories, non-fiction titles and children’s books. Martin also leads translation workshops, is a frequent speaker at professional conferences, and is a former co-chair of the Translators Association committee.

Publisher: Scribe Publications

Publishing Date: 12/11/2020

ISBN: 978-1913348298

A bit about me

Here I am with my husband visiting one of our favourite places in the world, the Westonbirt Arboretum!

A bit about me, my name is Jess Andoh-Thayre. I am from Brixton, South London. I currently live in Cambodia. Before living here in Cambodia, I lived in Tanzania with my husband, who is a diplomat. I have also lived in Chile and Spain. I am a French, Spanish and English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher. I recently qualified as a SENCo (Special Educational Needs Coordinator). After taking three years off to have a baby in a pandemic and also retrain, I have just returned to work as an Elementary Learning Support Teacher.