Amazon.com description: Product Description: This is the first comprehensive history of the literature of Georgia to be written in English Donald Rayfield reveals this literature to be unique among that of the former Soviet Union in its combination of quality and length of literary tradition. Beginning with the first, overwhelmingly religious texts of the fifth century, he charts the development of Georgian literature through the "golden age" of medieval literature, which culminated in Rustaveli's great poetic work The Knight in the Panther's Skin, to the diverse literature of the twentieth century. A major contribution to an area of growing interest, this concise but thorough history combines clarity and accessibility for the non-specialist (all passages are translated into English) with a wide breadth of cultural reference.