The Tale of the Narts (Ambavi Nartebisa): The Abkhaz Folk Epic. Illustrated by A. Vartagava. Tbilisi, 1980. In Georgian.

ამბავი ნართებისა : აფხაზური ხალხური ეპოსი / თარგმნა გიორგი ბაქანიძემ (პროზა) და ჯემალ აჯიაშვილმა (პოეზია) ; პწკარედი მოამზადა გ. ამიჩბამ ; საქართველოს სსრ მწერალთა კავშირთან არსებული მხატვრული თარგმანისა და ლიტერატურული ურთიერთობის მთავარი სარედაქციო კოლეგია ; მხატვარი ა. ვართაგავა.
თბილისი : "ნაკადული", 1980. 270 გვერდი ; 20 სმ.
მაგარი ყდა. ტირაჟი 10 000 ც. 
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The Tale of the Narts : The Abkhaz Folk Epic / translated by Giorgi Bakanidze (prose) and Jemal Ajiashvili (poetry) ; literal translation prepared by G. Amichba ; general editorial board of the Committee for Literary Translation and Relations of the Georgian SSR Writers' Union ; illustrated by A. Vartagava.
Tbilisi : "Nakaduli", 1980. 270 pp. ; 20 cm.
Hardcover. Print run of 10,000 copies. 
Binding good: scattered age spotting to front and rear boards, cloth rubbed in places. Text block very good: clean, firm and complete.

An early Georgian-language edition of the Nart sagas, the great heroic epic cycle shared across the peoples of the North Caucasus, in its Abkhaz recension. The Narts are a body of oral epic tradition common to the Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar and related Caucasian peoples, centered on a race of heroic ancestors and the matriarchal figure Satanay-Guasha; comparative folklorists have traced elements of the cycle to Scythian-period antecedents of the seventh to fourth centuries BCE. The Abkhaz material was scientifically compiled by the Dmitri Gulia Institute of Language, Literature and History (Georgian SSR Academy of Sciences, Abkhaz branch) and first issued in the Abkhaz language in Sukhumi in 1962, with a Russian translation by Georgy Gulia (prose) and Semyon Lipkin (poetry) appearing the same year in Moscow. This Georgian rendering, prepared under the auspices of the Georgian Writers' Union's committee for literary translation, appears to be the first Georgian-language edition of the Abkhaz Nart cycle, predating by nearly three decades the edition issued by the Tbilisi Caucasian House cultural center in 2007, which has since been reprinted as the modern standard and is now cited as the primary Georgian-language source on the epic. Produced during the period of close Georgian-Abkhaz literary cooperation before the wars of the 1990s, the volume is a document of that collaboration as much as a literary text, and copies from this printing are seldom found on the market today.