Bread and Ashes by Tony Anderson: book review

Bread and Ashes: A Walk through the Mountains of Georgia (2004) is a memoir of the British author’s mountain trek in 1998 with his friend Chris Willoughby.

Chris Willoughby, an inspiring wildlife photographer, is the nephew of explorer John Baddeley, who travelled through the Caucasus in the generation before Willoughby. The author uses Baddeley’s written accounts of his journey to partially retrace his steps.

Anderson also references other explorers of the region. For example, ‘In The Caucasian Journey, Negley Farson vividly describes an attempt to cross the Klukhor Pass … and I often thought of that as a benchmark on my Richter Scale of difficulties. However, Chris and I unanimously awarded ourselves five Negleys for our efforts that day’ as they travelled through the Arkhotis Pass in strong hail that ‘bent us double like corn.’

The memoir begins in Ilisu, Azarbaijan, and moves onto Tusheti, Khevsureti, Ratcha, the Svaneti region, and Tbilisi in Georgia. Anderson first travelled to Georgia in 1989 and hence includes his recollections of previous journeys, as well as current day trips to Georgia to 2001, for comparisons and explanations.  

Anderson writes of Georgia’s heroes and legends, history and politics, as well as its cultural legacy. For example, he includes quotes from Georgia’s famous medieval poet, Shota Rustaveli (1160-about 1220), and his epic poem ‘The Knight in the Panther’s Skin’ (using Venera Urushadze’s translation – there has since been a better translation: the 2015 publication by American translator Lyn Coffin).

He also quotes from John Steinbeck (1902-1968), the American author of Grapes of Wrath, who also visited Georgia and wrote about it in Russian Journal.

Anderson writes of his attempts to understand the history of the Georgian language: ‘… the Georgian (more properly Kartvelian) group of languages, consisting of Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz and Svan …[are] a language family isolate with no obvious relationship to any other language on God’s earth.’

He writes of Georgia at the crossroads of Asia and Europe as ‘the belt that holds the two continents together’ and includes a discussion of where exactly one continent’s boundary ends and the other continent’s boundary starts.

He also writes of tracking elusive animals, such as sighting three striped hyena, and eating rhinocerus soup in Svaneti (although when he asked for the recipe it was never provided).

The title Bread and Ashes comes from a traditional Mingrelian story-teller’s conclusion: ‘Conclusion of the tale, the tale, Maize-bread with ashes hast though ate …’

Although the trek occurred before Georgia’s independence, it is still relevant and fascinating. Exceptionally well written, with an informative and seamless flow of the past, present, and future, it is a travel memoir of quality and endurable interest.

[Below are my photographs of Mestia in Svaneti region of the Caucasus Mountains]

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).