Chabua Amiredjibi
An iconic Georgian writer, born in Tbilisi into a noble family. Ch. Amiredjibi’s parents and close relatives became victims of Stalin’s terror in 1937. In April 1944 he was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in the Siberian Gulag. He finally returned to Georgia in 1960 after 16 years of detention, three prison escapes and two death sentences. Returning to his homeland in his late 30s, he began his literary career and quickly attracted attention with his first volumes of stories. Amiredjibi’s most famous novel Data Tutashkhia was first published in 1973, gaining sensational success and the fame for the writer. Conceived during Ch. Amiredjibi’s years in prison, it was only though the intervention of the Georgian Communist Party chief Eduard Shevardnadze that this substantial novel passed the Soviet censors and got published.
On November 16, 2010, he was ordained as a Georgian Orthodox monk under the name of David.