LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE AND WINNER OF THE WARWICK PRIZE FOR WOMEN IN TRANSLATION
AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR
Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.
'That night Stasia took an oath, swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again, recalling the taste with all her senses, she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds, avert catastrophes, and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.'
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 centre 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.
Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.
1900, Georgia: in the deep south of the Russian Empire, Stasia, the daughter of a famous chocolatier, dreams of ballet in Paris, but marries a soldier, and finds herself caught up in the October Revolution. Escaping with her children, she finds shelter with her unworldly sister Christine, whose beauty, fatally, has caught the eye of StalinÕs henchman. Disastrous consequences ensue for the whole family É 2006, Germany: after the fall of the Iron Curtain Georgia is shaken by a civil war. Niza, StasiaÕs brilliant great-granddaughter, has broken from her family and moved to Berlin. But when her 12-year-old niece Brilka runs away, Niza must track her down and tell her the truth about their family - and about the secret recipe for hot chocolate, which has given both salvation and misfortune over six generations. Truly epic and utterly absorbing, The Eighth Life is a novel of seven exceptional lives lived under the heat and light of empire, revolution, war, repression, and liberation. It is the story of the century.
'A haunting tale of Georgia over the last century that's both raw and heartbreaking, The Eighth Life is a brilliant act of storytelling and an insightful look into Georgian culture and history.'
