The Lack of Light
A Novel of Georgia
Published on 23. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
736 pages
978-0-06-325361-2 (ISBN)
Description
A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
A PEOPLE MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE WEEK
"Catnip for Ferrante fans." -Boston Globe
"Readers will find [The Lack of Light] irresistible." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A thrilling, heartbreaking, unforgettable story. Not a page too long."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A page-turning epic of loss and redemption in the vein of Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, about a group of four women who formed a deep friendship in the turbulent years leading up to and after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.
They are four, as different as can be: the romantic Nene, the clever outsider Ira, the idealistic Dina, and the sensitive Keto. Inseparable since childhood, they grow up together in an old Tiblisi courtyard, in Georgia, at a time when the Soviet Union is crumbling and the future of their country is in question. Each in her own way experiences love, hope, and disappointment as local mob wars, romance, and civil war threaten to swallow up their worlds. Rising to challenges both personal and political -a first love that can only blossom in secret, violent street skirmishes, a ravaging drug epidemic-the four women's friendship seems indestructible, until an unforgivable act of betrayal and a tragic death shatter their bond.
Decades later, the three survivors reunite at a major retrospective of their late friend's photography. The pictures on display tell the story not only of their country but also of their friendship, and, confronted by them, Nene, Ira, and Keto relive their staggering loss. Then, unexpectedly, something new is glimpsed, and forgiveness seems within reach. Like the International Booker Prize nominated The Eighth Life before it, Nino Haratischwili's The Lack of Light is an emotionally bold, decades-spanning epic in which to lose yourself, brought to life by the vibrant colors of Georgia's culture and its people. It is a glorious book readers will return to again and again.
Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin
A PEOPLE MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE WEEK
"Catnip for Ferrante fans." -Boston Globe
"Readers will find [The Lack of Light] irresistible." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A thrilling, heartbreaking, unforgettable story. Not a page too long."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A page-turning epic of loss and redemption in the vein of Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, about a group of four women who formed a deep friendship in the turbulent years leading up to and after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union.
They are four, as different as can be: the romantic Nene, the clever outsider Ira, the idealistic Dina, and the sensitive Keto. Inseparable since childhood, they grow up together in an old Tiblisi courtyard, in Georgia, at a time when the Soviet Union is crumbling and the future of their country is in question. Each in her own way experiences love, hope, and disappointment as local mob wars, romance, and civil war threaten to swallow up their worlds. Rising to challenges both personal and political -a first love that can only blossom in secret, violent street skirmishes, a ravaging drug epidemic-the four women's friendship seems indestructible, until an unforgivable act of betrayal and a tragic death shatter their bond.
Decades later, the three survivors reunite at a major retrospective of their late friend's photography. The pictures on display tell the story not only of their country but also of their friendship, and, confronted by them, Nene, Ira, and Keto relive their staggering loss. Then, unexpectedly, something new is glimpsed, and forgiveness seems within reach. Like the International Booker Prize nominated The Eighth Life before it, Nino Haratischwili's The Lack of Light is an emotionally bold, decades-spanning epic in which to lose yourself, brought to life by the vibrant colors of Georgia's culture and its people. It is a glorious book readers will return to again and again.
Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin
Reviews / Votes
"This story of four young friends in 1990's Georgia took me back to my own childhood in Cuba. The Lack of Light is a novel that thrills you, the kind you can't put down. Nino Haratischwili grips you from the first page with an intensity that only great writers can achieve." - Armando Lucas Correa, author of the international bestseller The German Girl"Haratischwili enchants with this monumental novel that follows four friends in Georgia from the end of the Soviet era to the near present. . . . [An] explosive and intimate tale of the women's struggle to not only survive but thrive . . . Readers will find [The Lack of Light] irresistible." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Elena Ferrante fans, this bestselling European author might become your next obsession." - People (Book of the Week)
"A thrilling, heartbreaking, unforgettable story. Not a page too long." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Peopled with unfor-gettable characters and told through a careful compilation of intimate details, The Lack of Light is a story of resilience, creativity and friendship set against the chaos of civil war and destruction." - BookPage (starred review)
"An epic, edge-of-the-seat tale of friendship and political chaos." - Financial Times
"Catnip for Ferrante fans." - Boston Globe
"Compelling . . . the visceral story of a quartet of women facing down the violence of history . . . for fans of Elena Ferrante." - Library Journal
"This epic novel by Haratischwili follows four female friends growing up together in the same apartment complex in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in the years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union." - Washington Post
Moving and enthralling . . . An elegy for a country and a that might have been, The Lack of Light is an ardent and unsparing testament - Times Literary Supplement
"Elena Ferrante goes to Tbilisi - an epic . . . Haratischwili has found a powerful perspective, using four ruined childhoods as a way of dramatising the suffering of millions." - Sunday Times
This immersive epic follows the lives of four female friends-Nene, Dina, Ira and Keto-as they navigate the tumultuous years before and after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union. A tale of resilience and redemption - Economist, Books of the Year
"[Haratischwili turns] darkness into a gripping story about the power and pitfalls of female friendship . . . I also fell for this book. I'm glad Haratischwili has tackled the brutalities of that time. People need to understand." - The Spectator
"Brilliant. [The Lack of Light] dazzles, first and foremost, by its epic scale: over 700 pages, a dozen characters, a human fresco spanning more than thirty years, and fascinating . . . at once Russian in its existential ardor and German in its psychological depth . . . a great novel about rebellion, about the attempt and temptation to live." - Le Figaro
"Remember this name: Nino Haratischwili . . . a formidable storyteller . . . The Lack of Light is a novel that devours the reader even as the reader devours it . . . Haratischwili manages to sew together the euphoria of intimacy with the brutality of politics. Masterfully. Without ever stifling the characters' warmth of hope." - Le Monde
"[The Lack of Light] features a whirlwind cast of supporting characters that bring to mind the spellbinding atmospheres of Orhan Pamuk's novels. But it is above all Elena Ferrante who seems to be whispering in Nino Haratischwili's ear, as she recounts the tormented lives of these prodigious new friends. Her radiant novel is the splendid gift of this literary season." - L'OBS
"Something rather extraordinary happened. The world fell away and I fell, wholly, happily, into the book... My breath caught in my throat, tears nestled in my lashes... devastatingly brilliant." - New York Times Book Review
"A harrowing, heartening and utterly engrossing epic novel ... astonishing." - The Guardian
"In heartfelt prose, Haratischwili seamlessly weaves the political upheaval around the characters into the love and loss in their lives. Haratischwili's epic portrait of a close-knit family doubles as a stunning tribute to the power of resilience." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A lavish banquet of family stories that can, for all their sorrows, be devoured with gluttonous delight. Nino Haratischwili's characters . . . come to exuberant life. Her huge novel . . . shows a double face, its crushing pain and loss nonetheless conveyed with an artful storyteller's sheer joy in her craft." - Financial Times
"This novel has generated substantial industry buzz and international critical praise. Both are justified... The Eighth Life-the story of a family, a country, a century-is an imaginative, expansive, and important read." - Booklist (starred review)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Rough front
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
798 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-325361-2 (9780063253612)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2025
HarperCollins
€20.42
Available for download
Persons
Born in Tbilisi in 1983, Nino Haratischwili is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and theatre director. She is among the most acclaimed and widely-read authors of contemporary German literature. Her third novel, The Eighth Life (for Brilka), was translated into thirty languages and became an international bestseller. It 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 is her most recent novel. Haratischwili lives in Berlin.