Otar Chiladze

Otar Chiladze (; March 20, 1933 — October 1, 2009) was a Georgian writer who played a prominent role in the resurrection of Georgian prose in the post-Joseph Stalin era. His novels characteristically fuse Sumerian and Hellenic mythology with the predicaments of a modern Georgian intellectual.

Life and work Chiladze was born in Sighnaghi, a town in Kakheti, the easternmost province of then-Soviet Georgia. He graduated from the Tbilisi State University with a degree in journalism in 1956. His works, primary poetry, first appeared in the 1950s. At the same time, Chiladze engaged in literary journalism, working for leading magazines in Tbilisi. He gained popularity with his series of lengthy, atmospheric novels, such as A Man Was Going Down the Road (1972–3), Everyone That Findeth Me (1976), Avelum (1995), and others. He was a chief editor of the literary magazine Mnatobi since 1997. Chiladze also published several collections of poems and plays. He was awarded the Shota Rustaveli Prize in 1983 and the State Prize of Georgia in 1993. His elder brother Tamaz Chiladze was also a writer.

Reception and legacy

Otar Chiladze who became a Georgian classic author during his lifetime was awarded some Highest State Prizes of Georgia and in 1998 was nominated for the Nobel Prize along with five other writers. His works have been translated into English, Russian, Armenian, Estonian, Serbian, French, Danish, German, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Spanish. Otar Chiladze's novels A Man Was Going Down the Road and Avelum, translated by Donald Rayfield, were published in the United Kingdom in 2012 and 2013.