Rustaveli, Shota. Abzhyas-tsa zshau. Alaka (The Knight in the Panther's Skin: A Fairy Tale for Children). 2003. In Abkhaz. With Enclosed Letter

Шота Руставели
Абжьас-цәа зшәу. Алакә
Ашколқәаранзатәии ашкол хәыҷқәеи рзы
Аиллиустрациақәа Иракли Ҭоизе итәқәа
Атыжырта «Сани», 2003.
***
Shota Rustaveli.
Abzhyas-tsa zshau. Alaka (The Knight in the Panther's Skin: A Fairy Tale for Children).
For pre-school and primary-school children. Illustrations by Irakli Toidze.
SANI Publishing, 2003. Text in Abkhaz. Foreword in Abkhaz and English.
28 pages; 30 cm. Illustrated wrappers. With an enclosed letter of 1 May 2003 from the Georgian-Abkhaz Coordination Commission, signed in ink.
Condition: Wrappers - Good+: scuffs and scratches, slight nicks to the edges, white chipping along the lower left edge of the back cover. Text block - Fine: clean.

This is the children's retelling of Shota Rustaveli's twelfth-century Georgian epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin, issued in Abkhaz in 2003 as a joint cultural project of the Georgian-Abkhaz Coordination Commission, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) with the support of UNOMIG and UNDP. The foreword by Z. Lakerbaia, printed in Abkhaz with a parallel English text, explains that the poem is too complex for young readers, and that an adapted fairy-tale narration for pre-school and primary-school children was first made in 1965 by Tamara Eristavi. The Georgian version was prepared for publication by her granddaughter Tamara Ashkatsava together with Elene Berdzenishvili, with illustrations by Irakli Toidze, and the Abkhaz edition is presented as the first Abkhaz version of this children's text. Earlier Abkhaz translations of the full poem are recorded in Sukhumi in 1937 and in 1959 (by Dimitri Gulia), but no other children's edition appears in the catalogues consulted. The book belongs to the years after the Georgian-Abkhaz war, when joint publishing projects were among the few cultural contacts across the ceasefire line. The enclosed letter, dated 1 May 2003 and signed in ink, states that 800 copies were distributed free to schools in Abkhazia, which helps to explain why the book is rarely seen on the market.