Ketskhoveli, Niko. I Come from Arsiani, and I Rejoice (Arsianidan movdivar, momikharia): stories. First edition. Tbilisi, 1974. In Georgian.

კეცხოველი, ნიკო. არსიანიდან მოვდივარ, მომიხარია : [მოთხრობები] / რედაქტორი ნ. ქართველიშვილი ; მხატვარი ჯ. ყავლაშვილი. გამოცემა პირველი.
თბილისი : გამომცემლობა "ნაკადული", 1974. 291 გვერდი, [16] ფურცელი ილუსტრაცია ; 22 სმ. ტირაჟი 20 000 ც.
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Ketskhoveli, Niko. I Come from Arsiani, and I Rejoice : [stories] / editor N. Kartvelishvili ; illustrator J. Yavlashvili. First edition; awarded the Shota Rustaveli State Prize, 1975.
Tbilisi : "Nakaduli" Publishing House, 1974. 291 pp., with [16] photographic plates ; 22 cm.
Print run of 20,000 copies. Original pictorial dust jacket present; hardcover boards beneath in black cloth, gilt-stamped.
Boards very good: minor wear at corners. Text block very good: firm, clean, photographic plates fully preserved. Dust jacket good: creasing and small splits at spine folds.

A first edition, prize-winning collection of literary essays and stories by Niko Ketskhoveli (1897-1983), the founding figure of the modern Georgian school of botany, longtime director of the Institute of Botany of the Georgian Academy of Sciences (which today bears his name), and a full academician of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. Alongside his scientific work on the geobotany and plant cover of Georgia, Ketskhoveli was a prolific literary essayist whose nature writing combined scientific observation with a strong regional and patriotic sensibility; this volume, comprising three sections ("Napuzari," "Chveneburebi," and "Mta da bari vis gaukvia" - "Whom the Mountain and the Lowland Have Followed"), draws on his travels through Meskheti-Javakheti and the Arsiani range in southern Georgia, a region with which his own family's roots were bound, and touches on the Chveneburebi, ethnic Georgians of the Ottoman and Turkish borderlands. The book was awarded the Shota Rustaveli State Prize in 1975, one of two such prizes Ketskhoveli received in his career, cementing its status as one of his most significant literary works. The illustrated plates document the landscapes and communities of the region he describes. A first edition of a prize-winning work by a major figure of twentieth-century Georgian science and letters, of interest to collectors of Georgian literary and scientific history alike.