The Eighth Life
SynopsisPlot
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste… Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia’s is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.
Story
About this book
Nino Haratischvili's novel begins in the early 1900s in Georgia, then a territory near the southern edge of the Russian Empire. A family there grows wealthy through a chocolate recipe kept secret and treated almost as a ritual object. The drink it produces is said to give intense pleasure, yet an aftertaste turns bitter for those who taste it.
Stasia receives the recipe from her Georgian father and carries it north when she marries Simon, whose posting takes them to St Petersburg during the Russian Revolution. Her marriage is the first of many attachments that begin sweetly and later sour. Across the century that follows, further generations live through war, political upheaval, loss, and moments of joy.
Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia and writes in German. Her novel follows a family line rather than one central hero, so relationships return in new forms and later relatives notice echoes of earlier lives. The chocolate recipe threads through those years as both a household treasure and a warning. Georgia anchors the opening chapters before the setting widens across the Soviet Union and further west.
