| The Prose of the mountains: Three tales of the Caucasus Qazbegi Aleksandre : Aleksandre Qazbegi was born into aristocratic privilege. Yet, instead of enjoying the life his high birth could have afforded him, he chose a life of deliberate poverty, first in the mountains where he was born, and where he lived as a shepherd for seven years, and subsequently in Tbilisi. As he crafted a fresh literary style for a new readerly demographic, Qazbegi became Georgia's first professional writer. He died at the age of forty-five in an insane asylum in Tbilisi. |