Ardesia

Returning to the country where one grew up almost always involves delving into memories. Even more so if, once there, one happens to witness the transfer of an ancestor’s remains. This is what happens to the protagonist of Slate, who recounts her return to Mestia, Georgia, where, against her will, she participates in the exhumation of her great-grandfather, who, at the end of an adventurous life, was buried in an unidentified spot on the family land. Thus begins a new journey for the narrator, one of digressions and revelations, unfolding as the excavator overturns clods, shifts slate slabs and bones, along with fragments of memory.
With the gaze of someone who lives between two worlds, Jorjoliani describes her homeland, with its traditions and paradoxes: a land that seems to seek a balance between the turbulence of change and the weight of a past that resurfaces without warning.

Author: Ruska Jorjoliani

Ruska Jorjoliani was born in Mestia, Georgia, in 1985 and has lived in Palermo since 2007. In 2015, she published her debut novel, Your Presence Is Like a City (Corrimano), written in Italian, translated into German, and winner of numerous awards. Her second novel, Three Living, Three Dead (Voland), was published in 2020. She has also translated Nodar Dumbadze, Nana Ekvtimishvili, and Iva Pezuashvili from Georgian, and Daur Nachkebia from Russian.