Nicholas Tchkotoua

Who was Nicholas Tchkotoua?

Prince Nicholas Tchkotoua was a Georgian writer. He fled his homeland after the takeover by the Bolsheviks in 1921.

In 1949, Tchkotoua published a novel ''Timeless' he wrote in English, claimed as the first-ever internationally published novel written by a Georgian. In the novel, set in Tbilisi, Lausanne and Paris before the First World War, Georgian Prince Shota’s love for his Taya, a Russian princess, remains faithful even when outside forces manipulate their emotions, prise them apart and Shota ends up betrothed to an American. But it is the emotion, rather than the betrothal, that concerns the author. A new, re-edited version of the novel was published in 2008.

Tchkotoua asked that after his death his heart be buried in Georgia. In 1988 his family smuggled it back to the cemetery in Vera, Tbilisi - where it lies to this day.