The lack of light: A deeply atmospheric Georgian epic

A little bit of background📃

I was completely drawn to The lack of light when I spotted it at my local library. I have always been fascinated by the Cold War and life in the former Soviet Union. An epic tale of the Georgian experience at the fall of the Iron Curtain sounded right up my alley!

Author Nino Haratischwili was born and raised in Tbilisi, moving to Germany in the early 1990s with her mother to escape the social and political chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Haratischwili did live again in Georgia for a short period but she later returned to Hamburg to study drama, becoming a German citizen in 2012. One of Nino's four novels published to date, The eighth life, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020.

The lack of light | Published February 2022 | Read October 2025

The story📖

The lack of light is set in two places and time periods. The first is Tbilisi's Sololaki neighbourhood as Georgia lurches towards independence. Four girls - Keto, Dina, Nene and Ira - grow up together in the neighbourhood, simultaneously dealing with their impending adulthood and the huge political and social change facing their country as the Iron Curtain falls. The four girls are unique in their own way: Dina, the rebellious, daughter of an unconventional mother; Ira, the clever outsider; Nene, the romantic, and niece of the most powerful criminal in the city; and Keto, the sensitive, motherless waif. The four women’s friendship seems indestructible, until an unforgivable act of betrayal and a tragic death shatters their bond.

Decades later, the three survivors are reunited at a retrospective exhibition in Brussels of their late friend's photography. The pictures document not only their story, but that of their country. The trio is forced to confront the evidence of their shared past and reframe their friendship as their memories emerge from the shadows.

My thoughts on the book💭

The lack of light was not an easy read for me. It's heavy, raw, and brutal. But this is the novel's power. Its honesty and authenticity made me feel completely transported into the violent world of Tbilisi on the cusp of independence.

There is so much to absorb in the story, from family dynamics, to the lack of basic human necessities, to power struggles for control of the streets, to the complexities of differing political viewpoints. At its heart, the book is a coming of age story, but the four girls share the limelight with another character, Tbilisi, a city that descends into chaos, shaping how the girls journey into adulthood.

There's so much darkness in the novel and readers may find it too heavy and depressing. It is those things, but it is also a brutally honest story of friendship, betrayal, survival, and forgiveness. I found it easy to be swept along by the rich characterisation and Haratischwili's writing, a fascinating mix of raw, sensitive, harsh, sweeping and heartbreaking. I will say that there is a huge cast of characters and I did find myself lost at times, trying to remember who was who. There is no doubt that the story is unsettling, and its bleakness has left a mark. A lack of light plagues all the characters to the end.

In sum📝

I have found that translations can sometimes feel clunky, but not so in The lack of light. It feels like the translators have expertly captured the essence of Haratischwili's words. I felt every word on every page of the 700+-page epic. The way Haratischwili reconstructs the girls' stories using the images from the photographic exhibition was clever. The atmosphere of the courtyard where the girls live and all the chaos of the time period literally leap off the page. The lack of light in the story is exhausting. This is a book, though, that has left a lasting impression and provided me with a unique insight into Georgia's surge towards independence.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐