Kvachi
SynopsisPlot
This is, in brief, the story of a swindler, a Georgian Felix Krull, or perhaps a cynical Don Quixote, named Kvachi Kvachantiradze: womanizer, cheat, perpetrator of insurance fraud, bank-robber, associate of Rasputin, filmmaker, revolutionary, and pimp.
Story
About this book
Kvachi follows Kvachi Kvachantiradze, a Georgian con artist whose schemes carry him through a string of identities and misadventures. He is a womanizer, insurance fraudster, bank robber, and pimp who attaches himself to powerful figures, including Rasputin, and who also tries filmmaking and revolution. The novel belongs to the picaresque tradition, the literary form built around a roguish, low-born hero who survives by wit rather than virtue.
Mikheil Javakhishvili, a leading Georgian novelist of the early twentieth century, wrote Kvachi during a period when Georgia's political situation was shifting between independence and Soviet control. The book's fast-moving dialogue and black humour give it comic energy, while the parade of swindles keeps the plot unpredictable. Kvachantiradze is not presented as admirable; his charm is inseparable from his dishonesty.
For decades the novel stayed out of view for readers outside Georgian, and its English translation brought Javakhishvili's work to a wider audience. Its schemes place it near the European picaresque line running from Cervantes to Fielding. The story moves from Georgian provincial life into Russia, linking small local scams to the circles surrounding imperial power.
