[Signed] Mdivani, Giorgi. Plays (Piesebi). Tbilisi, 1959. In Georgian.

მდივანი, გიორგი. პიესები.
თბილისი : გამომცემლობა „საბჭოთა მწერალი", 1959. 345 გვერდი ; 21 სანტიმეტრი. ტირაჟი 2 000 ცალი.
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Mdivani, Giorgi. Plays.
Tbilisi: "Sabchota Mtserali" ("Soviet Writer") Publishing House, 1959. 345 pp. ; 21 cm. Print run of 2,000 copies.
Signed by the author on the front free endpaper, with a presentation inscription in Georgian.
Original publisher's hardcover binding. Condition very good: light wear to corners and spine ends; text block firm and clean.

Giorgi Mdivani (1905-1981) was one of the most widely performed Georgian Soviet dramatists of the mid-twentieth century, writing in both Georgian and Russian and contributing extensively to Soviet cinema as a screenwriter. Merited Artist of the Georgian SSR (1961) and later a laureate of the Azerbaijan SSR State Prize (1978), Mdivani made his literary debut in 1922 and achieved his first major success with "Alkazar" (1936), a play on the Spanish Civil War staged at both the Moscow Chamber Theatre and the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi, becoming one of the most widely produced Soviet plays of its generation. The present 1959 Tbilisi collection gathers five of his plays in the original Georgian: the historical drama "Petre Bagrationi," a revised version of "Alkazari," "Samshoblo" (Motherland), "Batalioni midis dasavlethisken" (The Battalion Marches West), and "Vardo." Issued by "Sabchota Mtserali," the principal Georgian literary publishing house, in a run of 2,000 copies, the volume is signed and dated by the author on the front free endpaper only three days after the book was passed for printing, indicating a presentation copy among the earliest to leave the press. Signed and precisely dated association copies of Mdivani are uncommon on the market, most surviving copies of his Soviet-era play collections being unsigned reading copies from personal or institutional libraries. The volume is of interest to collectors of twentieth-century Georgian and Soviet drama, specialists in Georgian theatre history, and those assembling signed literary material from the postwar Georgian SSR.