In his most typical and influential novella, Jaqo's Dispossessed (ჯაყოს ხიზნები Jakos Khiznebi), first published in 1924, Javakhishvili contrasts the swashbuckling, grasping, and swindler Jaqo with his victim, Prince Teimuraz Khevistavi, the amiable intellectual and ineffectual philanthropist whom his trustee, Jaqo, robs of his fortune, his beautiful and beloved wife Margo, and even of his sanity. His plots, sometimes overtly rebellious, violent, and sexually passionate, intersect traditional taboos and belie any reconciliation with the new world and have a common ground: the rise of the Georgian kulak, the life of the Georgian aristocratic intellectual and dilettante, and the impact on them both of the revolutionary upheaval of 1917 and the Bolshevik takeover of 1921. In his best writings, the novelist combines the devastating realism and characteristic humorous touches with underlying pessimism and anarchy to contrast country and city life, tsarist and Soviet times. Javakhishvili skillfully incorporated folk phraseology into the normalized narrative language.
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