The Snake’s Skin

A cornerstone of Georgian literary modernism, Snake Skin--much admired by Stefan Zweig--crossbreeds Wagnerian fantasy with Georgian paganism to produce a novel of unsettling originality. Partaking equally of Nietzsche, Andrei Bely, and such flights of grotesque fancy as Lautréamont’s Maldoror, this is the story of a British soldier named Archibald McAsh who, during an epic journey across Persia, discovers the primeval Georgian lurking within himself: Archil Makashvili.