The Banner of The Passing Clouds (2013) is set in Tbilisi, Georgia, from
1953 to the early 1990s. It commences on the day Joseph Stalin dies. On that
day, 5 March 1953, Tiniko, the four-year-old daughter of Vera and Givi
Dzhugashvili dies of polio and their son is born. He is called Iosif
Dzhugashvili – the same name as Stalin’s birth name – ‘not for malicious
intent, but in honour of a hero.’ But that name gnaws at Iosif’s insides, in
his lungs, in his gut, like an illness, until Georgia’s independence in 1991.
Iosif is the narrator of the story. His brother, Paolo (nicknamed Poliko),
is born a couple of years later. He was the handsome one, the blonde one, the
one that attracted a lot of attention. They slept close enough to light each
other’s cigarettes and formed a tight brotherly bond. Iosif was tone deaf, but became
an ethnomusicologist at the Institute of Ethnology, and Poliko became a road
sweeper with a fabulous singing voice. Whereas Poliko bonded with adventure,
Iosif bonded with his tape recorder, taping singers of Tbilisi. When Poliko
turned 18 he joined the military for two years.
Iosif hears Maia Dolidze singing from her apartment, where she lived with
her mother Eliso and father Data. He records her voice as part of his
musicology collection.
On Poliko’s return from the war he is not the same – from continuous crying
he ‘fell deeper into his abyss.’ His parents call the doctor who commits Poliko
to the Institute of Mental Wellness. Iosif is livid at this decision and the
separation of his brother. Maia and Iosif hatch a plan, free Poliko, and care
for him at home. Maia moves in, Poliko stops crying, and falls in love with
her: ‘If I was jealous I know I did not show it,’ says Iosif. Instead, Iosif
records them singing together – beautifully – and gains a one-year performance
contract for them to sing as a duo called The Bells. If they gain popularity,
the government will give them an apartment.
Things are looking optimistic for Iosif too when he meets laboratory
scientist Tamoona while seeking a remedy for his mother’s leg, infected from a
thorn from her cactus collection. But Poliko has a vicious dark side that Iosif
hasn’t seen before – and one that no one else experiences. Why is he so angry
with Iosif?
Iosif makes a tragic error in judgement. He is complicit in his family’s
unhappiness, the tension with Tamoona, and his own emotionally suppressed
personality.
Iosif’s world falls apart over the next seven years – in parallel with the
corrosion of the Soviet regime and the formation of Georgia’s fragile
independence in 1991. Iosif is forced to confront his reaction to his brother’s
quest for freedom and his role in its tragic consequences. What does independence
– political freedom – now means for Iosif and his country?
Iosif’s character is complex and interesting, for Iosif has both a
protective and envious relationship with his brother. This is not merely a book
about life under a communist regime and the desire for freedom from a
restrictive ordered life, but also one of brotherly love, codependence,
suppressed natural yearnings, and duty.
At times the novel resembles Albanian author Ismail Kadare’s The File on H: A Novel (2008), but it
also has a distinct Euro-Georgian style. Reading it from Tbilisi, a city I have
known for the past five years, I understand the complicated layers, linguistic nuances
in the novel and appreciate the themes and threads that run throughout. The
novel does not feed on power and anger, nor is it simple and nebulous; rather,
it is a well-balanced, well-written progression of the narrator’s ideologies
within the larger institutional regime.
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