Details:

Pages: 235
Format: 130 x 195
Word count ≈ 53 500

The Observer

Author: Lasha Bugadze

In a dystopian future Georgia, 24 years after the last elections, a despot who had banned voting announces a bizarre referendum—“the election of elections”—where citizens must decide whether elections should be held. This move is meant to simulate democracy for the West and Kyiv, which recently defeated Russia, while maintaining authoritarian control.

Exiled Georgians from the third wave of emigration (post-2024) return as observers, including the narrator—a former writer—who seeks both to witness his homeland’s decay and to find a lost love. Georgia is now a paranoid, militarized society filled with bomb shelters and propaganda. The despot has declared himself divine, and citizens, degraded and fearful, accept this without question.

The narrator descends into the depths of the country—literally and metaphorically—encountering dissidents living beneath Mount Makhata in denial of the regime’s reality, hoping to restore democracy underground. Rebellion stirs, the Caspian Alliance begins to fracture, and the referendum ends with the majority rejecting elections, fulfilling the despot’s plan to appear democratic while maintaining control.

Yet, unexpectedly, the despot dies — possibly from poisoning, unrest, or age — and everything changes rapidly. The regime collapses, revealing how one man had stalled history. The narrator finds his lost love in an unexpected role, and though no decisive battle occurs, the possibility of renewal finally emerges.