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Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1983, Nino Haratischwili is a novelist, playwright, and theatre director. She is among the most widely read authors of contemporary German literature. Her third novel, The Eighth Life (for Brilka), was translated into 30 languages and became an international bestseller. It also won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Anna Seghers Prize, and the Bertolt Brecht Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The Lack of Light (HarperVia, September 9, 2025) centers on four women who formed a deep friendship in the turbulent years leading up to and after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.
Handsell readers your book in a handful of words:
It is a personal story about a dark time when I grew up and which had a lasting influence on me and which I have tried to tell as a story of female friendship and resilience.
On your nightstand now:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Yevgenia Ginzburg, Varlam Shalamov--a lot of books about the Gulag system (researching for my new novel). It is very depressing, but at the same time very fulfilling and eye opening. It is sad that we humans learn so little from history.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I loved that she was a girl and yet so fearless and brave, so "crazy" and different. It was the first book I read by myself, without anyone reading to me and maybe that's why it remains an important book for me to this day.
Your top five authors:
Homer
Marina Tsvetaeva
Mikhail Bulgakov
Philip Roth
And always the one who makes me read as if it were the first time and shatters me with the power of literature... Miranda July. The last book that really delighted me and made me want to read and read and read was All Fours.
Book you've faked reading:
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Didn't fake it, just gave up, even though I really wanted to love it, but unfortunately it didn't work out.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. For me, it's a masterpiece on so many levels! A testimony to the absurdity of the Soviet system, a philosophical treatise and at the same time one of the most beautiful, saddest and at the same time funniest books I have ever read. I remember going from tears to laughter from page to page.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I don't do that because I always read the text on the back!
Book you hid from your parents:
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Because they would have said for sure that I was too young for the book and I probably was!
Book that changed your life:
There are a lot of them, because the books always find us at the right time, and I am convinced of that; at different stages of my life, there were very different books that opened my eyes. But Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex was groundbreaking for me as a woman.
Favorite line from a book:
There are so many, but what inspires me most are good poems that I never stop reading.
Five books you'll never part with:
Greek mythology: this is where my consciousness as a human being begins. And I love their logic and at the same time their boundless imagination. A wonderful way to approach the world!
Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. She is a goddess of language and poetry and at the same time one of the most tragic and contradictory literary figures in the world.
Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann. She is also a master of language and a very ambivalent author, a kind of pioneer, if you like. A trailblazer for many women...
Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta by Aglaja Veteranyi. One of the most beautiful and saddest autobiographical books by a Romanian-Swiss author, which has accompanied me for 20 years and which I was allowed to bring to the stage myself in an adaptation two years ago.
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth. For me, this is a highlight of Roth's work and such a merciless examination of life and death.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Love Life by Zeruya Shalev. I just love everything in and about this book!