I first gushed about this to the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club in our Best Books of the Summer 2021 event. This was the Georgian novel that I didn't know my life was missing. I listened to it on audio, somewhat begrudgingly. Several people had told me it was really amazing, but golly it's long at 1000+ pages. I plunged in, hoping I wouldn't regret it. And very quickly could not wait to find out what happened next in these peoples' lives. It's a generational story, tracking 100 years in a Georgian family who fan out across Europe and the world as they seek to run from the horrors of what's unfolding in the Soviet Union. The family also has a magical chocolate recipe that they mix up at opportune moments, but whether it's a blessing or a curse remains to be seen for the 95 or so years. The ending is amazing.

In this sweeping platonic love story, four female friends first meet as grade schoolers in a Tblisi apartment courtyard in the late 1980s. In alternating timelines, we see how these women’s lives tangle with and are impacted by their home city and its political upheaval, invasions and civil war, and violence of organized crime over the course of twenty years. This was a hard read—both challenging to me as a reader and utterly heartbreaking—but my time here was well spent. Translated from the original German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.