Data Tutashkhia

The novel tells the story of a Georgian outlaw at the time of the tsars (1854 onwards). It combines thriller elements with Dostoyevskian themes of personal fate and national identity. Above all, though, it defends the right to personal freedom and critical expression in the face of a repressive political system. The story is told by Count Segedy, retired Russian-Hungarian chief of the Caucasian gendarmerie, interspersed with accounts from other people who have come across the outlaw Data Tutashkhia, who leads the tsarist police a merry dance for years. It so happens that the gendarmerie chief, Mushni Sarandia, is Data’s cousin – outwardly his spitting image but at the same time his lifelong opponent. While Data drops out of society in his youth – he shoots a Russian officer in a duel and escapes punishment by fleeing into the mountains –, Mushni, thanks to his brilliant intelligence and fiendish determination, rises rapidly through the ranks of officialdom. He conducts cunning campaigns against smugglers and spies but regards it as his life’s task to track down his cousin Data, who is living outside the law. When this fails he seeks instead to publicly blacken his name. This, too, does not succeed – either in the novel or in reality: to this day Data Tutashkhia lives on in the Georgian consciousness as a national hero.