A novel to meditate upon. It tells a story of Data Tutashkhia, a (fictional) Georgian outlaw from the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. Covering his entire life except the childhood, it’s far from your average coming-of-age book. It’s rather a string of stories told by a string of people — always about Data but never by him — that come together as a philosophical examination of building a character.

Is it always a good deed to help someone in need? What if your help leads to bigger misery? Is it always good to stay away then? How do you fight evil, and what is it anyway? The whole book is a dispute about questions like these.

There’s no TL;DR or quotes that could impart the meaning or the feeling of this novel; it’s like the halting problem — there’s no way to predict the program’s outcome without running it. Unlike a program though this novel can be picked up again and read from any place, any chapter, going through the arguments once more and getting to enjoy their beauty as that of a spark in the depth of an old gemstone or of burning fire.

★★★★★

(700+ pages, no ISBN, English translation on Worldcat)