Lermontov, M. Yu. A Hero of Our Time (Khaamta Afyrkhatsa / Geroy nashego vremeni). Sukhumi, 1959. In Abkhaz.

М. И. Лермонтов. Хаамҭа афырхаца [«Герой нашего времени»]. Еиҭеигеит А. Амҟуаб. Аредактор П. Ҷкадуа. Атехредактор М. Хахмигери. Акорректорцәа: Т. Папба, Т. Ашхаруа.
Сухуми [Аҟәа]: [Абхазское государственное издательство]; типография имени Ленина, 1959.
254 с., с иллюстрациями в тексте и на отдельных листах. Тираж 2 000 экз. Слегка увеличенный формат.
Издательский составной переплет: серые картонажные крышки с конгревным «мраморным» тиснением, на верхней крышке — наклеенная иллюстративная виньетка с изображением Печорина на фоне горного пейзажа в золоченой рамке, заглавие на абхазском языке «ХААМҬА АФЫРХАЦА» и имя автора «М. И. Лермонтов» золотом; коленкоровый корешок с золотым тиснением заглавия и автора. 
Состояние хорошее: переплет крепкий, блок плотный, утрат страниц нет, текст и иллюстрации сохранены полностью. 
***
Lermontov, M. Yu. A Hero of Our Time. Translated into Abkhaz by A. Amkuab; edited by P. Chkadua; technical editor M. Khakhmigeri; proofreaders T. Papba and T. Ashkharua.
Sukhumi (Aqwa): [Abkhaz State Publishing House]; printed at the Lenin Typography, 1959.
254 pp., with illustrations in the text and on separate plates. Print run 2,000 copies. Slightly enlarged format.
Publisher's composite binding: grey board covers with blind «marbled» tooling, the upper cover bearing a mounted pictorial vignette of Pechorin against a mountain landscape within a gilt frame, with the Abkhaz title «ХААМҬА АФЫРХАЦА» and the author's name «М. И. Лермонтов» in gilt; cloth spine gilt-lettered with title and author. 
Condition good: binding firm, text block tight, no page losses, text and illustrations preserved in full. 

A book of unusual rarity and considerable historical interest. Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov's «A Hero of Our Time» (1840) — the foundational psychological novel of Russian literature, set largely in the Caucasus that Lermontov knew at first hand from his service as an exiled officer — was rendered into Abkhaz by the writer and translator Aleksei Amkuab and published in Sukhumi in April 1959 in a print run of only 2,000 copies. The volume is part of the broad post-Stalin programme of «national-language» editions of the Russian classics, by which the Soviet authorities sought simultaneously to support and to ideologically frame the literary cultures of the smaller peoples of the USSR; for the Abkhaz, whose written literature dates only from the late nineteenth century and whose alphabet — visible here in its full late-1950s form, with its characteristic combinations of Cyrillic letters and special graphemes such as «ҭ», «ҟ», «ҩ», «ӡ» — was repeatedly reformed in the Soviet decades, such translations were major events of cultural codification. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the book sets the action of «Bela», «Maxim Maximych», «Taman» and «Princess Mary» — narratives so deeply tied to the Caucasus and to Russian-mountaineer encounter — back into the language of one of the Caucasian peoples whose ancestors Lermontov himself had observed and depicted; the Abkhaz toponyms «Бела», «Грушницки», «Печорин», «Кабардинцәеи ачеченцәеи» preserved in transliteration acquire a new resonance in this domestic-Caucasian setting. Soviet editions of Lermontov in Abkhaz are virtually absent from international library catalogues and trade records, and copies surface only sporadically; the modest print run of 2,000, combined with the heavy use to which such school and library texts were subjected in the small Abkhaz reading public, makes any surviving copy a document both of a particular Soviet-era literary politics and of a moment in the codification of a Caucasian written culture.