Nino Haratischwili broke through internationally with the bestseller The Eighth Life, the monumental family epic that also tells the story of the 'red' twentieth century. The book reads sometimes like a fairy tale, sometimes like a nightmare. Haratischwili grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she witnessed her homeland's decline at close quarters in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Soviet Union disintegrated, the Georgian state disintegrated and there was the rise of organised crime and heroin - which wiped a generation of young people off the map. She wrote about these events in The Eighth Life and The Lack of Light, among others. At home in two languages, Haratischwili has been writing in both German and Georgian since she was 12. She studied film directing in Tbilisi and theatre directing in Hamburg. Her theatre writing has won several awards. Following Supra - A Feast, Annelies Beck talks to Haratischwili about her work, history, actuality and the power of literature.