Books
2025
HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATORSHIP
A GUIDE
Annotation:
Mikheil Charkvianiβs βHow to Survive a Dictatorshipβ is a documentary text at the boundary between poetry and prose, written amidst the backdrop of the repressions taking place in Georgia. It warns the reader of the dictatorship that is likely to follow and the difficulties that will accompany it. It presents the lessons that world history has taught us, the knowledge of those who have fought against the regime, and a vision of what awaits those who surrender to it.
The author distills dictatorship and its destructive nature down to its everyday aspects, its routine elements. He asserts that oppression and injustice affect everyone, regardless of how submissive a person is, regardless of whether they are supportive of the regime, regardless of whether they choose to avoid the political process altogether and live only within the confines of their own life.
This is a guide for anyone who fights, who believes, who sees the future and is willing to sacrifice their life for what they believe in.
Despite sowing nihilism, fear, and hopelessness at first glance, it does not seek to acclimate the reader to this crisis. On the contrary, it teaches them how to survive at a time and in a place where one's circumstances of living become so absurd as to make it seem that the struggle has lost all its power and meaning.
What can serve as the impetus for survival in circumstances like these? How do you oppose a system that is far more powerful than you? At what point will you admit to yourself that you've lost?
If you are willing to pose painful questions about the future, this text will provide a clear and concise answer as to how to survive a dictatorship.
2024
EXODUS | ααααα‘ααα
Annotation:
This is the first publication of "Exodus" as a book. The documentary-style show consisting of these informally told stories was staged in 2022 at Open Space - Centre for Visual and performing arts by director Mikheil Charkviani. None of the performances in the show, which took place over 10 days, have been performed since. The project included close to 100 stories, more than 40 of which have been included in this book.
These personal stories, told by Georgian nationals, deal with the pivotal social, political, and cultural phenomena of the 1990s to 2000s, both within the country and outside it, phenomena that shaped modern Georgia as a nation in important ways.
The events described in this book, events which often manifested as trauma and which had lasting effects across generations, describe not only specific people and their experiences but also the country's recent past and present.
Through these texts, the reader will come to know such crucial episodes in Georgian history as April 9, 1989, and April 9, 1991; the War in Abkhazia, the Civil War, and the August War; the Rose Revolution of 2003; the demonstrations broken up on May 26 and July 5.
The reader will share in the experiences of emigration, the violation of workers' rights, becoming a refugee in one's own country, the pain of losing others and of losing oneself.
Exodus is a broken narrative, at times fragmentary, at times lacking a conclusion, oftentimes distressing, but the reader will find that the theme that runs most prominently through this anthology of documentary prose is that of faith in the future.
