Tbilisi

A kaleidoscopic portrait of Georgia’s capital city since 1989.

Located on Europe’s periphery, at the edge of Asia, Tbilisi has always been a crossroads of culture, peoples and politics. From architecture to art, protest to religion, nationalism to language, this book offers a pen portrait of the modern Georgian capital—a city where old and new live side by side in restless harmony.

Tbilisi has played an outsize role in modern global politics. Beginning in 1989, Maximilian Hess shows how the city’s experiences over the last four decades shed light on the historical, political and cultural forces shaping the world today. Momentous events in Tbilisi helped drive the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this was where the neoliberal era of the early 2000s found its firmest foothold. The city’s post-Soviet years also foreshadowed the devastation that Russian interference and aggression have now brought to Ukraine, while the rise and subsequent dominance of a Georgian billionaire-turned-politician have clear echoes across the Atlantic.

Delving into Tbilisi’s remarkably great influence on contemporary music and the arts, Hess showcases the intriguing capital’s entrepôt nature, and its turbulent recent history. This is a place which blurs the lines between the real and the imagined; between past and present, East and West.