It is a testament to Vardiashvili's writing that he converts the grief and yearning of the forcibly displaced into such a pacy and frequently funny novel ... Vardiashvili's hugely impressive debut might be about a place that many of us will not know well but its themes are representative of the wider story of our era ... In this wise, moving and instructive book Vardiashvili, with extraordinary maturity and lightness of touch, cuts through the deafening white noise of sloganeering arguments to present the intimate lives of traumatised people doing their best

New European

Hard by a Great Forest has the offbeat lucidity of a waking dream ... a novel that indeed resembles a walk through a dark forest, Vardiashvili's imaginative powers render his timely subject matter at once strange, disorientating and – occasionally – even magical

Daily Mail

This debut novel captures both the long scars of collective trauma and the indomitable spirit of those determined to remember and survive

Oprah Daily, Most Anticipated Books of 2024

A sensitive exploration of grief, memory, loss and the immigrant experience woven seamlessly into a propulsive narrative

Perspective magazine

Astonishingly crafted with history, candour, beauty, grief and just a little magic. A book like no other, from an imagination like no other. Vardiashvili has written a triumph

Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of LESS IS LOST

Rich with irony and animated with astonishing humanity, this tale of a young Georgian refugee's odyssey into his birthplace to rescue family left my heart bruised and battered and aching for more

Khaled Hosseini