Paperback with 277 pages in good condition.

Fed up with working for Time magazine in London, Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time there in twenty vodka-fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country – tales of love, friendship and power cuts, of duelling (Georgian style), of horse races in the mountains, wars and refugees, broken hearts, fixed elections, drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses.

Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit, humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite, engaged, candid and blissfully poetic. PROLOGUE: The author visits a bizarre “Stalin theme park culminating in the eery viewing of Stalins death mask
SHASHLIK, TAMADA, SUPRA
The author visits Khaketi, where she is introduced to the tamada culture of “exaggerated hospitality; a point-of-honour hospitality. During a marathon toasting session at dinner she realizes “It is a kind of aggression. When they did not know you well, they filled your glass and filled it again and carefully watched how you drank it… This was the Georgian way, friend or enemy with nothing in between. History was lost in tradition, drinking a way of remembering and forgetting at the same time.