At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers, thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers. But this chocolate carries a bitter - some say cursed aftertaste. Through the years, across expanses of longing and loss, we witness generations of this remarkable family as they struggle and thrive, and live and die in the red century.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE AND WINNER OF THE WARWICK PRIZE FOR WOMEN IN TRANSLATIONAN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEARThe bestselling sensation that UK booksellers are calling this generation's War and Peace.Six romances, one revolution, the story of the century.At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers, thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers. But this chocolate carries a bitter - some say cursed - aftertaste ...Tumbling through the years, across vast expanses of longing and loss, witness generation after generation of this remarkable family as they struggle and thrive, divide and reunite, and live and die in the red 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.'

Autorentext

Nino Haratischvili was born in Georgia in 1983, and is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. At home in two different worlds, each with their own language, she has been writing in both German and Georgian since the age of twelve. In 2010, her debut novel, Juja, was nominated for the German Book Prize, as was Die Katze und der General in 2018. Her third novel, The Eighth Life, has been translated into many languages and is an international bestseller. It won the Anna Seghers Prize, the Lessing Prize Stipend, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. She lives in Berlin.

Charlotte Collins studied English Literature at Cambridge University and worked as an actor and radio journalist in Germany and the UK before becoming a literary translator. Her co-translation, with Ruth Martin, of Nino Haratischvili's The Eighth Life won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and in 2017 she was awarded the Goethe-Institut's Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life. Other translations include Seethaler's The Tobacconist, Homeland by Walter Kempowski, and Olga by 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. She has taught translation at the University of Kent and the Bristol Translates summer school, and is a former co-chair of the Society of Authors Translators Association.