The Lack of Light, page 68
—Punishment for a traitor.
krysha
—(Russian), lit.: “roof.” Here: criminal jargon for protection by a higher authority.
Lisichka
—(Russian), lit.: “Little Fox,” popular type of pocketknife.
lobio
—Georgian bean stew.
marshrutka
—Small minibus, a popular method of public transport in Georgia in the 1990s that is still used today.
Mkhedrioni
(aka Sakartvelo’s Mkhedrioni): The Georgian “Horsemen,” or “Knights.” Nationalist paramilitary organization founded in 1989 by the warlord and former thief-in-law Jaba Ioseliani. Took part in the 1991 coup against the first freely elected president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, became increasingly involved in criminal activity, participated in the wars in Ossetia and Abkhazia, and was outlawed in 1995.
Nona Gaprindashvili
—Georgian (formerly Soviet) chess player, first woman to win the title of Grandmaster.
obrez
—Sawn-off, illegally modified automatic weapon.
OPs
—“Operational colleagues,” high-ranking militsiya notorious for their brazen methods of securing their own sources of income.
paska
—Traditional Easter bread, similar to Italian panettone.
Pikris Gora
—Small neighborhood in Tbilisi, part of the Vere district.
pkhali
—Selection of various Georgian hors d’oeuvres made with walnut paste and e.g. eggplant, beetroot, or spinach.
privyet
—(Russian): Hello.
Queen Tamar
—Queen of Georgia, 1184–1213. Also referred to as “King Tamar,” indicating great admiration. Ruled over medieval Georgia at the height of its power, in a period known as the Golden Age.
razborka
—(Russian): Settling of accounts, usually on the street.
skhodka
—(Russian): Assembly; here: secret meeting of a gang of thieves.
Smena
—Soviet-era camera.
Stella’s Garden
—Local name for a small park in Sololaki.
strakhovka
—(Russian): Security, protection.
tamada
—Toastmaster at a Georgian banquet (supra), who proposes the toasts and acts as master of ceremonies.
Tapora
—From tapor, Russian for “axe.”
The Knight in the Panther’s Skin
—Georgia’s national epic, by Shota Rustaveli (c. 1172–1216), Georgian poet and one of the most important literary figures of the Middle Ages. The original manuscript of this courtly epic was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2013.
tsekhovik
—(Russian): Name given to Soviet businessmen and manufacturers, who usually ran a parallel business alongside their official factories and trades, bribing the state so they could sell their goods on the black market.
zastoi
—(Russian): Stagnation—term used to refer to the Brezhnev era.
A Note from the Translators
Nino has said in interviews that she writes quickly, in long bursts, without plotting every detail of the narrative in advance, and it’s an approach that is clearly apparent in her work. Her writing is pacey, full of emotion, flowing naturally from one scene to the next.
A translator’s process is necessarily different. In many ways, it is quite the opposite. We analyze, consider, weigh each word in a sentence, drafting and redrafting until we feel the balance is right. With two translators, this work is even more layered, and there is an additional stage of editing and negotiation at the end. The paradox is that all this meticulous, detailed work must produce an English text in a voice that still conveys the energy, flow, and heightened emotions of the original.
No two people will translate a sentence the same way, and we’re often asked how it is possible to create a consistent narrative voice in a co-translation. There are two answers to this. The first is quite prosaic: we check in with each other regularly to make sure we’re on the same page. As we draft our respective sections, we discuss and agree on how to translate various terms and phrases, particularly those that recur throughout the book. (It’s a schoolbag, not a satchel or backpack; those are too specific. — Does this guy have a buzzcut, is he bald, or has he shaved his head? — That party for school leavers merits the term “prom,” but the other one is a more informal event.) For The Lack of Light, we also did things like map out the courtyard, and swap images we found online to make sure we were seeing the same pictures in our mind’s eye. We make a lot of marginal notes, highlighting and querying for joint consideration, and once we’re reasonably happy with our draft, we send it to the other for close editing. This additional stage of co-translation can be time-consuming, but we both really enjoy it. It’s exciting to have a trusted colleague approach your work with fresh eyes, cross-checking against the original to make sure you haven’t missed anything, suggesting potential alternatives and improvements while also respecting your text and your choices and knowing not to smooth out the quirks of the original.
The other answer is that we both have a deep affinity with Nino’s writing, and a long history of working with her since our meeting at a translation summer school in 2012, where Nino was the invited author. Between us, we have translated four of her novels, a play, and several other texts. We are very much at home with her voice, her style, her rhythms, and sitting down with a new piece of work is like slipping on a familiar, colorful robe. We’ve observed and translated Nino’s evolution as a writer, from Juja to My Soul Twin and The Eighth Life, and now The Lack of Light.
Nino has always been at pains to stress that, although certain elements in her novels align with her own story—Georgian characters who move to Germany, for example—her novels are not autobiographical. However, authors draw on their experiences in different ways, and The Lack of Light is probably Nino’s most personal work to date. In it, she brings a vanished era vividly to life. She conjures the atmosphere, the streets, buildings, clothes, tastes, smells, and songs of her childhood, transports us to that particular time and place, and exposes us to the chaos, violence, hardships, and trauma Georgia endured in the infamous 1990s.
She also depicts the close bonds forged by community—and, above all, enduring friendship between women. It is perhaps surprising how rarely literary works take supportive female friendship as their central theme, and in The Lack of Light it is absolutely fundamental. It feels apt that, in the making of this translation, our own friendship and ongoing collaboration have become part of the book’s journey into English.
—Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin
March 2025
Here ends Nino Haratischwili’s
The Lack of Light.
An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.
About the Author and Translators
NINO HARATISCHWILI was born in Tbilisi and is an acclaimed and award-winning novelist and dramatist, and among the most important authors of contemporary German literature. Her international bestseller The Eighth Life (for Brilka) was translated into thirty languages and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.
CHARLOTTE COLLINS studied English literature at Cambridge University and worked as an actor and radio journalist before becoming a literary translator. She has translated works by Robert Seethaler, Eva Menasse, and Bernhard Schlink.
RUTH MARTIN studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German. She has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth and Hannah Arendt to Volker Weidermann and Shida Bazyar.
Their joint translation of The Eighth Life (for Brilka) received a PEN Translate Award and won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Copyright
“Demain, dès l’aube” by Victor Hugo translated by David Stanley Phillips included by kind permission of the translator. English translation copyright © 2025.
Excerpt from “In Sakartvelo/In Georgia” by Lado Asatiani translated by Mary Childs, with Maka Janikashvili, included by kind permission of the translators.
Excerpt from “Moscow Kitchens” by Yuliy Kim, included by kind permission of Yuliy Kim.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE LACK OF LIGHT. Copyright © 2022 by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt GmbH. English translation copyright © 2025 by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. A Note from the Translators copyright © 2025 by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Without limiting the exclusive rights of any author, contributor or the publisher of this publication, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception.
Originally published as Das mangelnde Licht in Germany in 2022 by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt.
harpercollins.com
FIRST HARPERVIA PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2025
Title page art by merrymuuu/stock.adobe.com
Cover design: Pete Garceau
Cover photograph: © Dina Oganova
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2025 ISBN: 978-0-06-325363-6
Version 07262025
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-325361-2
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Harlequin Enterprises ULC
www.harlequin.com
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
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HarperCollins Publishers
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Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland
www.harpercollins.co.uk
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Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Nino Haratischwili, The Lack of Light
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krysha
—(Russian), lit.: “roof.” Here: criminal jargon for protection by a higher authority.
Lisichka
—(Russian), lit.: “Little Fox,” popular type of pocketknife.
lobio
—Georgian bean stew.
marshrutka
—Small minibus, a popular method of public transport in Georgia in the 1990s that is still used today.
Mkhedrioni
(aka Sakartvelo’s Mkhedrioni): The Georgian “Horsemen,” or “Knights.” Nationalist paramilitary organization founded in 1989 by the warlord and former thief-in-law Jaba Ioseliani. Took part in the 1991 coup against the first freely elected president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, became increasingly involved in criminal activity, participated in the wars in Ossetia and Abkhazia, and was outlawed in 1995.
Nona Gaprindashvili
—Georgian (formerly Soviet) chess player, first woman to win the title of Grandmaster.
obrez
—Sawn-off, illegally modified automatic weapon.
OPs
—“Operational colleagues,” high-ranking militsiya notorious for their brazen methods of securing their own sources of income.
paska
—Traditional Easter bread, similar to Italian panettone.
Pikris Gora
—Small neighborhood in Tbilisi, part of the Vere district.
pkhali
—Selection of various Georgian hors d’oeuvres made with walnut paste and e.g. eggplant, beetroot, or spinach.
privyet
—(Russian): Hello.
Queen Tamar
—Queen of Georgia, 1184–1213. Also referred to as “King Tamar,” indicating great admiration. Ruled over medieval Georgia at the height of its power, in a period known as the Golden Age.
razborka
—(Russian): Settling of accounts, usually on the street.
skhodka
—(Russian): Assembly; here: secret meeting of a gang of thieves.
Smena
—Soviet-era camera.
Stella’s Garden
—Local name for a small park in Sololaki.
strakhovka
—(Russian): Security, protection.
tamada
—Toastmaster at a Georgian banquet (supra), who proposes the toasts and acts as master of ceremonies.
Tapora
—From tapor, Russian for “axe.”
The Knight in the Panther’s Skin
—Georgia’s national epic, by Shota Rustaveli (c. 1172–1216), Georgian poet and one of the most important literary figures of the Middle Ages. The original manuscript of this courtly epic was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2013.
tsekhovik
—(Russian): Name given to Soviet businessmen and manufacturers, who usually ran a parallel business alongside their official factories and trades, bribing the state so they could sell their goods on the black market.
zastoi
—(Russian): Stagnation—term used to refer to the Brezhnev era.
A Note from the Translators
Nino has said in interviews that she writes quickly, in long bursts, without plotting every detail of the narrative in advance, and it’s an approach that is clearly apparent in her work. Her writing is pacey, full of emotion, flowing naturally from one scene to the next.
A translator’s process is necessarily different. In many ways, it is quite the opposite. We analyze, consider, weigh each word in a sentence, drafting and redrafting until we feel the balance is right. With two translators, this work is even more layered, and there is an additional stage of editing and negotiation at the end. The paradox is that all this meticulous, detailed work must produce an English text in a voice that still conveys the energy, flow, and heightened emotions of the original.
No two people will translate a sentence the same way, and we’re often asked how it is possible to create a consistent narrative voice in a co-translation. There are two answers to this. The first is quite prosaic: we check in with each other regularly to make sure we’re on the same page. As we draft our respective sections, we discuss and agree on how to translate various terms and phrases, particularly those that recur throughout the book. (It’s a schoolbag, not a satchel or backpack; those are too specific. — Does this guy have a buzzcut, is he bald, or has he shaved his head? — That party for school leavers merits the term “prom,” but the other one is a more informal event.) For The Lack of Light, we also did things like map out the courtyard, and swap images we found online to make sure we were seeing the same pictures in our mind’s eye. We make a lot of marginal notes, highlighting and querying for joint consideration, and once we’re reasonably happy with our draft, we send it to the other for close editing. This additional stage of co-translation can be time-consuming, but we both really enjoy it. It’s exciting to have a trusted colleague approach your work with fresh eyes, cross-checking against the original to make sure you haven’t missed anything, suggesting potential alternatives and improvements while also respecting your text and your choices and knowing not to smooth out the quirks of the original.
The other answer is that we both have a deep affinity with Nino’s writing, and a long history of working with her since our meeting at a translation summer school in 2012, where Nino was the invited author. Between us, we have translated four of her novels, a play, and several other texts. We are very much at home with her voice, her style, her rhythms, and sitting down with a new piece of work is like slipping on a familiar, colorful robe. We’ve observed and translated Nino’s evolution as a writer, from Juja to My Soul Twin and The Eighth Life, and now The Lack of Light.
Nino has always been at pains to stress that, although certain elements in her novels align with her own story—Georgian characters who move to Germany, for example—her novels are not autobiographical. However, authors draw on their experiences in different ways, and The Lack of Light is probably Nino’s most personal work to date. In it, she brings a vanished era vividly to life. She conjures the atmosphere, the streets, buildings, clothes, tastes, smells, and songs of her childhood, transports us to that particular time and place, and exposes us to the chaos, violence, hardships, and trauma Georgia endured in the infamous 1990s.
She also depicts the close bonds forged by community—and, above all, enduring friendship between women. It is perhaps surprising how rarely literary works take supportive female friendship as their central theme, and in The Lack of Light it is absolutely fundamental. It feels apt that, in the making of this translation, our own friendship and ongoing collaboration have become part of the book’s journey into English.
—Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin
March 2025
Here ends Nino Haratischwili’s
The Lack of Light.
An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.
About the Author and Translators
NINO HARATISCHWILI was born in Tbilisi and is an acclaimed and award-winning novelist and dramatist, and among the most important authors of contemporary German literature. Her international bestseller The Eighth Life (for Brilka) was translated into thirty languages and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.
CHARLOTTE COLLINS studied English literature at Cambridge University and worked as an actor and radio journalist before becoming a literary translator. She has translated works by Robert Seethaler, Eva Menasse, and Bernhard Schlink.
RUTH MARTIN studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German. She has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth and Hannah Arendt to Volker Weidermann and Shida Bazyar.
Their joint translation of The Eighth Life (for Brilka) received a PEN Translate Award and won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Copyright
“Demain, dès l’aube” by Victor Hugo translated by David Stanley Phillips included by kind permission of the translator. English translation copyright © 2025.
Excerpt from “In Sakartvelo/In Georgia” by Lado Asatiani translated by Mary Childs, with Maka Janikashvili, included by kind permission of the translators.
Excerpt from “Moscow Kitchens” by Yuliy Kim, included by kind permission of Yuliy Kim.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE LACK OF LIGHT. Copyright © 2022 by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt GmbH. English translation copyright © 2025 by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. A Note from the Translators copyright © 2025 by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Without limiting the exclusive rights of any author, contributor or the publisher of this publication, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception.
Originally published as Das mangelnde Licht in Germany in 2022 by Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt.
harpercollins.com
FIRST HARPERVIA PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2025
Title page art by merrymuuu/stock.adobe.com
Cover design: Pete Garceau
Cover photograph: © Dina Oganova
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2025 ISBN: 978-0-06-325363-6
Version 07262025
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-325361-2
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Harlequin Enterprises ULC
www.harlequin.com
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
Ireland
HarperCollins Publishers
Macken House,
39/40 Mayor Street Upper,
Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland
www.harpercollins.co.uk
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Nino Haratischwili, The Lack of Light
