Wendell Steavenson
Paperback | Pages: 288 pages Rating: 3.82 | 224 Users | 24 Reviews
Itemize Books Supposing Stories I Stole
| Original Title: | Stories I Stole |
| ISBN: | 080214067X (ISBN13: 9780802140678) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | Georgia (Eurasian country) |
| Literary Awards: | Guardian First Book Award Nominee for Longlist (2002) |
Representaion Concering Books Stories I Stole
Fed up with working for Time magazine in London, Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time there in twenty vodka-fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country – tales of love, friendship and power cuts, of duelling (Georgian style), of horse races in the mountains, wars and refugees, broken hearts, fixed elections, drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses.Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit, humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite, engaged, candid and blissfully poetic. PROLOGUE: The author visits a bizarre “Stalin theme park” culminating in the eery viewing of Stalin’s death mask
SHASHLIK, TAMADA, SUPRA
The author visits Khaketi, where she is introduced to the tamada culture of “exaggerated hospitality; a point-of-honour hospitality.” During a marathon toasting session at dinner she realizes “It is a kind of aggression. When they did not know you well, they filled your glass and filled it again and carefully watched how you drank it… This was the Georgian way, friend or enemy with nothing in between. History was lost in tradition, drinking a way of remembering and forgetting at the same time.”
SHUKI
The frustration of living with unpredictable power and water supplies during extremely cold winters; the heat and/or electricity is often turned off due to reasons ranging from sabotage, corruption, non-payment, theft, “black clan economics,” and incompetence. Nevertheless this leads to a particular happiness when the light does come on. The author discovers the heavenly comfort of public baths. “Times were difficult; people had very little money. A lot of men were unemployed and all the old good professional jobs, teachers, nurses, police, engineers, were state jobs and paid less than $50 a month… Half Tbilisi owed the other half money.”
ETHNIC CLEANSING
The author visits Abkhazia, where a refugee has asked her to find the apartment that war caused him to flee. She finds a woman living there who is a refugee herself—after her own house was burned down, she discovered the fully furnished house in Abkhazia shortly after it was vacated, and has been living there ever since, proudly tending the garden of the previous occupant.
WHO ARE THE ABKHAZ
On the beach with Shalva, whom she suspects is “Abkhaz KGB.” He feeds her the party line about the Abkhaz occupation and she feels like screaming truths at him. “You won the war. You threw out all the Georgians. You have your homeland to yourselves (apart from the Armenian villages and the pockets of Russians) and what is this place? It’s a black hole. There are barely any cars, barely any petrol, no factories, nothing works, no private businesses, a curfew, no salaries, barely any pensions, a shell of a university, a terrible hospital, etc. etc.” But Shalva doubts that the West is paradise: “Here we have everything we need. The land is fertile.”
THE DUEL
The story of Dato and Aleko—they get into a car wreck and Dato’s face is horribly scarred. Aleko steals Dato’s wife and Dato challenges him to a fight. When Aleko beats Dato up, Dato pulls a gun and shoots the man until he is almost paralyzed. Dato, meanwhile, lives the rest of his life with his mother, hooked on heroin. “Not really Pushkin is it?”
LARGE ABANDONED OBJECTS
The author drives to Abkhazia with several journalists to see incumbent Ardzinba win the presidential election (the journalists rename it the “presidential farce,” since Ardzinba is the only one running. The author marvels over the abandoned relics of the USSR she sees along the roadside—rusting tractors, bits of pipline, lines of coal cars shunted and left along a rail line, etc. For her birthday, the author goes to Gorbachev’s dacha, a palatial house he built but never got to inhabit because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The house is a metaphor for the USSR: “impressive only for its sheer size but actually full of empty space and tat.”
List Of Books Stories I Stole
| Title | : | Stories I Stole |
| Author | : | Wendell Steavenson |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 288 pages |
| Published | : | February 24th 2004 by Grove Press (first published July 9th 2002) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Travel. Autobiography. Memoir. Short Stories |
Rating Of Books Stories I Stole
Ratings: 3.82 From 224 Users | 24 ReviewsWeigh Up Of Books Stories I Stole
Life in Georgia before the Rose Revolution as viewed by an outsider. But why has she no interest in Russia? Seems a bit biased. But it reads well.Alternately heartbreaking and hilarious. Highly recommended to anyone traveling to and writing about the Caucasus, or just traveling and writing in general.
Stories I Stole by Wendell Steavenson is prose for the sake of beautiful prose. Its in the style of The New Yorker but instead of the sophisticate upper west side, think ruined wannabe nation states & ethnic groups in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I just didn't enjoy this book. It was well written and informative, but not entertaining, kind of like a text book. It conveys a lot of information, but I wouldn't pick it up just to read it.
This book brought back all memories that have been lingering in my mind since I left Georgia, now more than 10 years ago. It could have ben me, writing the book, since a lot of what Steavenson writes about, also happened to me. I read it, re-read it and wondered (hind sight!!) how I ever survived 2 years in the capital of the country without hot water or washing maschine, with electricity put on rations, without an elevator to lift me to the 9th floor with all my kilos of potatoes, onions,
After living with a Georgian, and experiencing (at least on some level) the beauty that is Georgian culture, I had great expectations for this book. On the positive side, it has an expansive bibliography and suggested reading list, which should be useful to any student of the region. I also enjoyed reading a female writer, a rarity in Caucasian literature. I was a bit disappointed by the stylistic merits of the book - the storytelling seems mediocre when compared with the cultural and historic
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