Kakaphony
- ISBN:
- 9789941482885
- Category:
- Modern Georgian Prose
- Pages:
- 322
- Format:
- A5
- Cover:
- Soft
- Price:
- 12.90
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“Cacophony” is about being young and living it up, and about the decline of “Georgianness”. The book’s main protagonist is Temo Talakhadze. Temo, like Georgia itself, was born on April 9 . His mother died in childbirth, and his father fell victim to the military coup. His father’s last words were “Fuck Jaba Ioseliani! ”
Temo rents an apartment together with Rati Kobakhidze on 22 Merab Shaneli St. There, they spend mornings nursing their hangovers and evenings partying. To help them along with their partying, they spend New Year’s Eve searching the concrete jungle for a small hidden ball of hashish. Temo remembers all Georgia’s presidents, Zviad, Eduard, Misha, and the one whose name begins with B. The political mayhem covered by the media is forever imprinted on his mind, and he now devotes all his time to analysis of those events.
One day, Rati and Temo receive a visit from their childhood friend, Lasha-Giorgi Todua. After stabbing some unfortunate soul in a club while high on drugs, Lasha Todua took refuge in a monastery. The first thing he does after leaving the monastery is to make his way over to his friends’ place. In the monastery, a strange thing happened to Lasha. Just like the inhabitants of all other monasteries, he was required to be present at mass, but the masses at this monastery were different. No greenery appeared to thrive in the surroundings of the monastery. The only thing that grew was some kind of foul-smelling shrub from which the monks produced first a tincture and then incense. The plant turned out to be a mysterious and, according to Lasha, the world’s strongest strain of weed, and the parishioners spent every mass breathing in the fumes from the incense burners. The delicious feelings induced by the smoke were put down to religious ecstasy. Lasha brings an inexhaustible supply of the weed with him from the monastery and decides to set himself up in business. Lasha Todua wants to become the Pablo Escobar of Transcaucasia.
Temo, exhausted from work and high from smoking a bong, dreams that Saint Maximus the Crooked comes down and reveals the lottery numbers to him. Rati and Temo win forty thousand lari, and their lives are transformed into an endless party. Eventually, though, the party will have to come to an end, and they will have to return to real life. In secret, Rati thinks about moving out alone. He wants to find a job and put his messy existence in order. In the meantime, however, the young men find a new form of intoxication.