The Guardian: “Georgia on his mind: Chris Morgan Jones’s Tbilisi highlights”

"The history of Georgia is all invasions, yet the country has survived with its own language, alphabet and culture.”

This is a short description of Georgia from an article by novelist Chris Morgan Jones that was published by The Guardian on June 3.

The article says that Georgian capital Tbilisi, the setting for the author’s latest spy novel, is ‘like a European city that grew up in a different universe’.

"Georgia is a gift to a novelist: it seems to change every 10 miles,” the author says.

He adds that Tbilisi and the mountains in the north-east – the places he uses in his new book – are particularly rich.

"It was important to me to pick a location as alien to most readers as it is to my main character, who finds himself a long way from home and utterly out of his depth. And it has Russia to the north – a long-term enemy/rival/meddler in Georgian affairs – to add tension,” Jones writes.

Describing the capital city, he says Tbilisi feels European, medieval and completely foreign all at once.

"Two things make it unique: its geography and the dilapidated beauty of the old city,” the novelist says.

The article touches upon several other locations too, including small town near Tbilisi, Mtskheta and Joseph Stalin’s birthplace Gori.

Read the full article here: www.theguardian.com.