Dato Turashvili – Flight From the USSR

176 pages with illustration, 36.000 words, published in 2013

Rights have been sold to (Wagenbach)

Full English and Turkish translations available

Dato Turashvili is one of ’s most famous writers. In the well documented Flight From the USSR we follow an event from the eighties that shocked the world. Young actor Gega Kobakhidze and seven friends hijacked an airplane to escape Georgia. They are united in both their hate of the Russian occupier and their love for the country and culture of Georgia. And their love for the classic blue jeans, which is viewed as the symbol of anti-Soviet sentiments.

‘Dato Turashvili was one of the leaders of the Georgian student revolt of 1989 that was suppressed with violent action. He has successfully written a novel about the hijacking of the airplane. The 33 year old monk Tevdore is outright impressive as he takes the blame for the events and tries to avoid the death penalty for his accused friends.’ – NRC Handelsblad ****

‘A tragical, fascinating piece of Soviet history that is hardly known.’ – De Standaard ***

‘An astonishing book. Turashvili researched the sensational and extremely violent termination of the hijacking of an airplane in 1983 by eight young Georgians. And he wrote a fictional novel about it. Despite all we already knew about the Soviet regime, this is still shocking literature.’ – Noordhollands Dagblad ***

‘Dato Turashvili is famous in Georgia and Flight From the USSR is one of the country’s most beloved novels. It has been adapted for a stage play and shall be made into a movie next year. Read it and you will know why. Even though you feel a disastrous ending coming from page one, it doesn’t diminish the tension in the book one bit. Turashvili’s tone is light, interlaced with romance, poetic images and humor. Lots of dialogues which give the story its necessary lightness. It also gives the writer the freedom to give each character a personality of its own and a possible answer for their rash actions, which border a collective suicide. Turashvili describes and fictionalizes but refuses to judge and glorify. A beautiful novel and deserves a huge audience.’ – 8weekly.nl ****1/2

Dato Turashvili (Tbilisi, 1966) wrote plays, journals, stories, scripts and novels. His theatre play Jeans Generation , based on Flight From the USSR , premiered in 2001 and is Georgia’s most successful play. The Hollywood movie Jeans Generation is currently in preproduction with actor Vinnie Jones ( X-Men , Swordfish and Snatch ).

Cossee Publishers, Kerkstraat 361, 1017 HW Amsterdam, the | For more information, please contact Laurens Molegraaf: [email protected] or visit www.cossee.com/foreignrights . | To support Georgian literature beyond their borders, translation grants can be obtained through the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia. Visit www.culture.gov.ge for more information.