Suliashvili, D. Stories of the Distant Past (Motkhrobebi shoreulze). Editor I. Dolidze. Tbilisi, 1944. In Georgian.

სულიაშვილი, დავით. მოთხრობები შორეულზე / დავით სულიაშვილი ; რედაქტორი ი. დოლიძე.
თბილისი : საბლიტგამი, 1944 (სახელგამის სტამბა). 166 გვერდი ; 21 სანტიმეტრი.
ნაბეჭდი გარეკანი, წითლად დაბეჭდილი სათაურით და ოვალური ილუსტრაციით. ტირაჟი 2000 ცალი.
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Suliashvili, Davit. Stories of the Distant Past / Davit Suliashvili ; editor I. Dolidze.
Tbilisi : Sablit'gami, 1944 (Sakhelgami printing house). 166 pp. ; 21 cm.
Publisher's printed paper wrappers, title in red with an oval vignette. Print run 2,000 copies.
Wrappers good: damaged spine, tears and small losses along the edges. Text block good: firm; small edge tears.

A collection of stories in Georgian by Davit Suliashvili, issued in Tbilisi in 1944 by Sablitgami, the literary publishing house working under the Georgian SSR People's Commissariat of Education. The Russian parallel title on the back wrapper, Stories of the Past, indicates prose set in earlier times, and the same wrapper carries the name of the Commissariat's children's publishing section, Detyunizdat, so the volume was apparently intended for a young readership. The colophon records that the manuscript was signed to press on 14 December 1944, in the last winter before the end of the war, that I. Dolidze edited it, that it was printed in an edition of only 2,000 copies at the Sakhelgami printing house on Orjonikidze Street in Tbilisi, and that it was order number 491. Georgia was far from the front, but its presses worked under severe shortages, and the book shows it: the paper is coarse and flecked with wood fibre, and the wrappers are made of the same stock, with the title printed in red above an oval vignette of a river bank with trees and houses. Small editions of this kind, issued for children on poor paper and read hard, survive in few copies. The binding is simple paper wrappers, and the cover shows the honest wear of a book that has been handled. It will interest collectors of Georgian literature and of Soviet children's books, and those who gather imprints of the Caucasus in the years of the Second World War.