The Trauma of Internal Displacement in Teona Dolenjashvili's Novel “The Bird Will Not Fly Out”

Résumé

The reflection of the conflicts of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region is interestingly and multifacetedly presented in modern Georgian literature, in these types of texts special attention is paid to the image-icon of the displa­ced person. In this context, Teona Dolenjashvili's novel The Bird Will Not Fly Out is interesting. The text is based on real stories of displaced people from Abkhazia and Syria, which allows the author to present the essence of internal displacement in a global context as one of the most painful problems of the modern era. The bearer of the stigma of an internally displaced person is a displaced girl from Abkhazia – Nata, who managed to escape from the burning Sokhumi at the age of six, although she constantly lives with those painful memories that time could not dispel, moreover, the compulsively in­flicted trauma of her childhood changed her worldview forever and even be­co­ming an already famous photojournalist, war as a ghost, always accom­panies her.

This novel exactly fits into and is in line with the theoretical frame­work of post-colonialism, internal displacement, victory and collective trau­ma, the author with intense emotional passages manages to outline the con­cept of internal displacement as a collective trauma in the background of war, the most destructive event for humanity.