Leo Vardiashvili

Leo Vardiashvili came to the United Kingdom with his family as a refugee from Georgia when he was thirteen years old. He studied English Literature at Queen Mary College, University of London and now works in the financial sector. He is in his early forties and this is his first novel. Rights for Hard by a Great Forest have sold in major deals to Bloomsbury UK and the Riverhead imprint of Penguin Random House in the US Hard by a Great Forest has also sold in Germany, Holland, Italy, Romania, Brazil, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, France, Finland and Spanish World Rights.

Set in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, two years after the occupation of South Ossetia by Russia in 2008, Hard by a Great Forest follows the fortunes of a father and sons who, having fled the conflict for asylum in western Europe, must return to their decaying but still beautiful homeland to rescue each other and make peace with the past. By turns savage and tender, compassionate and harrowing, it is a powerful but ultimately hopeful novel about the individual and collective trauma of war.