The Eighth Life: (for Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili, Charlotte Collins (Translator), Ruth Martin (Translator)

About the Book

Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.

At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers, thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers. But this chocolate carries a bitter - some say cursed - aftertaste …

Tumbling through the years, across vast expanses of longing and loss, witness generation after generation of this remarkable family as they struggle and thrive, divide and reunite, and live and die in the red century.

Review

‘A harrowing, heartening and utterly engrossing epic novel … astonishing … A subtle and compelling translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (on the heels of a Georgian version earlier this year) should make this as great a literary phenomenon in English as it has been in German.’-- Maya Jaggi ― The Guardian

‘The Eighth Life … is a lavish banquet of family stories that can, for all their sorrows, be devoured with gluttonous delight. Nino Haratischvili’s characters … come to exuberant life. Her huge novel … shows a double face, its crushing pain and loss nonetheless conveyed with an artful storyteller’s sheer joy in her craft.’-- Boyd Tonkin ― The Financial Times

‘It is an ambitious undertaking, but the author retains a firm grasp on her material and knows exactly how she wishes to present the human cost and consequences to a family facing war and colliding ideologies … I finished by applauding the vision, boldness and passionate commitment.’-- Elizabeth Buchan ― Daily Mail

About the Author

Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. At home in two different worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve. In 2010, her debut novel Juja was nominated for the German Book Prize, as was her most recent Die Katze und der General in 2018. 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. It is being translated into many languages, and has already been a major bestseller on publication in Holland, Poland, and Georgia.

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. She received the Goethe-Institut’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize in 2017 for Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Her other translations include Seethaler’s The Tobacconist and The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells.

Ruth Martin has a PhD in German literature and philosophy from the University of London. Her recent translations include Volker Weidermann’s Dreamers, Michael Köhlmeier’s novels Two Gentlemen on the Beach and Yiza, short fiction by Joseph Roth, and essays by Hannah Arendt. She has taught translation to undergraduates at Birkbeck and the University of Kent, and is currently co-chair of the Society of Authors Translators Association.