Leo Vardiashvili
Yes and no.
No one is a directly based on anyone I know. Yet, a lot of anecdotes, quirks, ways of speaking, ways of swearing, are based on dozens and dozens of real Georgians I've met.
I really did take a taxi from the airport into Tbilisi with a taxi driver who just WOULD NOT stop smoking for the 40 minute drive. Most of the cigarettes he didn't even actually smoke, they just hung there raining ash all over him - which is a detail that has ended up in the novel.
No one is a directly based on anyone I know. Yet, a lot of anecdotes, quirks, ways of speaking, ways of swearing, are based on dozens and dozens of real Georgians I've met.
I really did take a taxi from the airport into Tbilisi with a taxi driver who just WOULD NOT stop smoking for the 40 minute drive. Most of the cigarettes he didn't even actually smoke, they just hung there raining ash all over him - which is a detail that has ended up in the novel.
More Answered Questions
Riana
asked
Leo Vardiashvili:
I nearly didn't want to ask you this because I seem to be asking a lot of questions about your book. Your characters have been waking ME up at night and telling ME what to do! I don't recall this happening in the past. Perhaps your characters are just very real, as well as having a life of their own. Is this something you have also experienced after reading another author's novel?
Riana
asked
Leo Vardiashvili:
I am curious to know whether you were interested in words as a child growing up in Sololaki, did you ever write stories back then? Or was writing something you began in the UK? And did you begin your writing in Georgian - as a way to survive the isolation you felt, at first, living in a foreign land?
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