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Prince Nicholas Tchkotoua
Wikipedia
His Illustrious Highness Prince Nicholas Tchkotoua (1909 -
1984) was a Georgian writer and a prominent member of the
Order of Malta. He fled his homeland after the takeover by
the Bolsheviks in 1921. He was educated in France and
Switzerland and settled in the US in 1933 where he met and
married Carol Marmon, only daughter of Howard Carpenter
Marmon (creator of the Marmon Wasp whilst at the Marmon
Motor Car Company). He and his family later moved to
Lausanne, Switzerland where he died in 1984.
In 1949, Tchkotoua published a novel 'Timeless' he wrote in
English, claimed as the first-ever internationally published
novel written by a Georgian. In the novel, set in Tbilisi,
Figure 108: His Illustrious
Highness Prince Nicholas Lausanne and Paris before the First World War, Georgian
Tchkotoua Prince Shota’s love for his Taya, a Russian princess, remains faithful even when
outside forces manipulate their emotions, pries them apart and Shota ends up
betrothed to an American. But it is the emotion, rather than the betrothal, that
concerns the author. A new, re-edited version of the novel was published in
2008 to some acclaim.
Tchkotoua asked that after his death his heart be buried in Georgia. In 1988 his
family smuggled it back to the cemetery in Vera, Tbilisi - where it lies to this day.
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