Iunona Guruli

Iunona Guruli was born in Tbilisi in 1978 and is a writer and literary translator. She studied acting and journalism in Georgia and moved to Germany in 1999, where she studied politics and history.
Guruli made her debut in Georgia in 2015 with the short story collection »Die Diagnose« (tr: The Diagnosis), for which she was awarded the SABA Literature Prize for Best Debut.

In 2018, a German translation of this book, »Wenn es nur Licht gäbe, bevor es dunkel wird«, was published by Guruli herself. In the dream-like short stories, the post-Soviet Georgian present appears as a night-black pandemonium. Violence and suffering are omnipresent here, especially in the lives of Georgian women, who suffer from patriarchal conditions and to whom Guruli gives a voice. In addition to 16 stories, the volume also brings together 55 short texts in the form of surreal classified ads, which succinctly capture the weight of lived life in concise images – »Offer 28-year-old but well-preserved green eyes, moldy dreams and broken heart with interesting content«.

»Brief ohne Absender« (2023; tr: Letter Without a Sender), Guruli’s first novel, was written by the author in German. In it, she tells the story of Elena, who grows up as an only child with her mother and grandmother in Tbilisi in the 1980s, on several time levels and with a sense for drastic motifs. Her life – told retrospectively by Elena herself – oscillates between a carefree childhood and the harsh reality of historical upheaval, which turns Georgia into a hostile place, so that Elena finally takes flight and ends up in Berlin. When she receives a letter from her childhood friend Ane, who has disappeared without a trace, she flies back to Georgia and embarks on a journey into her family’s past, which is closely interwoven with the fate of an entire country. »On 248 pages, Guruli demonstrates with poetic linguistic power how the feeling of home and security can suddenly be corrupted by political, but also interpersonal coincidences«. (»Tagesspiegel«) Her latest novel »დიაგნოზის გარეშე« (tr: Without Diagnosis) was published in 2023.

Iunona Guruli lives in Berlin.

Wenn es nur Licht gäbe, bevor es dunkel wird
btb
München, 2018

Mohnfelder
Corvinus Presse
Berlin, 2020

Brief ohne Absender
Weissbooks
Berlin, 2023