The Basket

The Basket The Basket Author: Otar Chiladze Translated by: Anahit Bostanjyan The Basket published in 2003 is the last novel by Otar Chiladze. A Saga-novel, overtly portraying 'empire of evil', its consequences and a long journey of Georgian society and culture, won top literary award SABA as the best novel of the year. The story begins at the end of the 19th century when a Russian officer seduces a Georgian shepherd’s wife: the resulting bastard, the ancestor of the novels anti-heroes, is kept in a basket where he cannot interfere with his mother’s adultery. The shepherd avenges himself by murdering his wife and disemboweling himself, but fails to kill the boy in the basket. The boy, Razhden Kasheli, later rapes his foster-mother, before disappearing to become a robber and murderer, returning to Georgia with the Red Army and a female tramp he has married: he becomes a killer for the Soviet authorities. After he is murdered by a drunken Assyrian, his son Anton acts as a GPU and NKVD