In mellifluous, cascading prose Wendall Steavenson's Stories I Stole plunges its readers immediately and vividly into the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the years after the collapse of communism. Fed up with working for Time magazine in London, Steavenson moved to Georgia on a whim. Stories I Stole relates her time here in twenty vodka fuelled episodes drawn from all over the country - tales of love, friendship and power cuts, of duelling (Georgian style), of horse races in the mountains, wars and refugees, broken hearts, fixed elections, drinking sessions and a room containing a thousand roses.

With a glorious cast of eccentric characters, Stories I Stole is a wonderful example of a writer tackling an unconventional subject with such wit, humanity and sheer literary verve that one is unable to imagine why one never learnt more about Georgia before. Stories I Stole is a magnificent first book: erudite, engaged, candid and blissfully poetic.