Zurab Karumidze, a renowned Georgian writer and culturologist, passed away in December 2023 at 66. His death was mourned by the Georgian Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth and by his family, friends, and colleagues.
The untimely death of Zurab Karumidze is an excellent loss of modern Georgian writing.
This is not a standard phrase because the 66-year-old writer extensively defined the intellectual prestige of modern Georgian literature and presented it with dignity at home and abroad.
Zurab Karumidze was a specialist in English literature and would pass on the fundamental knowledge of this literature to the next generation for many years as a lecturer at Tbilisi State University.
Karumidze was a prolific and versatile author who wrote novels, short stories, essays, and documentary prose. He was also a scholar of English literature and a lecturer at Tbilisi State University.
He had a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he worked on postmodern American metafiction. He wrote some of his novels in English and translated his stories for publication in the United States.
Karumidze was widely recognized for his intellectual and experimental style, as well as for his references and allusions to Western literature. He received several awards, including the Literary Award “Saba” for his book “Life of Jazz” and the “Letter” award for his novel “Untergang: Traveling to Europe”.
He also edited the English-language literary magazines “Georgia/Caucasus Profile” and “Caucasus Context” and hosted the program “Night Conversations”.
The Georgian Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth expressed its sorrow over the death of Karumidze and sent condolences to his family, relatives, and colleagues.
The ministry praised Karumidze as a writer who extensively defined the intellectual prestige of modern Georgian literature and presented it with dignity at home and abroad.
Karumidze’s works include “Opera”, “The Wine-dark Sea”, “Goat and Gigo”, “Dagny, or a Love Feast”, “Caucasian Foxtrot”, “Bashi-Achuki or Moby Dick”, “Jazzmine”, “Untergang: Travel to Europe”, and “Belacqua”. His novels “Dagny, or a Love Feast” and “Untergang: Travel to Europe” have been translated into English and German.
