Published by the Georgian director and screenwriter in the publishing house “Upe tuviem und tālis”. Georgia Danelias story book “Passenger without a ticket”. It was translated into Latvian Gundars Aboliņš, who also translated Ivan Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” and Vladimir Zisman’s work “Guide to the world of the orchestra and its details”. Liene Jakovleva met with the actor and experienced translator.

Giorgi Danelli’s best-known films are “Mimino”, “Kin-dza-dza!”, “Autumn Marathon”, etc., and the storybook “Passenger without a ticket” is centered on the backstage of cinema shooting. The author himself gave the book the subtitle “Short stories from the life of a cinema director”.

About choosing this book for translation, Gundars Āboliņš says: “I really liked this book. I read it for the first time 15 years ago, maybe more. It remained a good memory. Then I looked at it again and felt that these texts somehow resonated in me, I hear, how they sound, and this is a very important moment to decide that this work could be translated into Latvian, to make it sound in Latvian.

I have read almost all of Danelia’s books, there are four of them and this is the first. He has collected the best of the first three books in the fourth, which is called, translated into Latvian, “Nightmares on your toes”. It is a selection of articles, but I chose the very first, unimproved version by the author. And, by the way, there is a lot about music in it, because music plays a very important role in Georgi Dannelly’s films. He has worked with the great composer Andreja Petrova in many films, and in the second half of his creative life – with Gija Kančeli. Both of them are big, contradictory, creative personalities. And the book has their adventures connected to film and film music, and there’s a lot of music in there.”

The conversation also includes the upcoming concert “Games of the Senses” at the House of Blackheads on May 28 at the Osokina Freedom Festival for Ukraine, where Andrej Osokina will perform piano music by Ukrainian and Latvian composers, while Gundars Āboliņš will read poetry from the new book of the musician and collector of feelings Ainars Kneš.