Selected writing

Features

Yuval Sharon and ‘anti-elite’ operaFT Weekend, September 2024

A summer of hope and despair in Tbilisi The New Yorker, August 2024

The artist holding valuable art hostage to protect Julian AssangeThe New Yorker, February 2024

How Georgians came together to fight a Russian-inspired lawFT Magazine, April 2023

The mountain doctor of Tusheti National Geographic, March 2022

Tourism rescues Omalo, Georgia, from oblivionThe Guardian, November 2021

Essays

What the wunderalten know: how age affects creativityFT Magazine, January 2024

Repression regains a foothold at the Writer’s House in TbilisiFinancial Times, September 2023

Russian art in the age of PutinCoda Story, February 2023

In praise of amateurism — a pianists’s storyFT Weekend, December 2022

Diary from Tbilisi: ‘Most of us feel this is Georgia’s war too’FT Weekend, September 2022

Red Star: Artist Alia Ali’s Yemeni FuturismArt Review, May 2021

City of Golden TemplesTank Magazine, December 2020

Criticism

On Russia and OrthodoxyFT Weekend, October 2024

On GauguinFT Weekend, August 2024

On Tom Parfitt’s ‘High Caucasus’ FT Weekend, July 2023

On Rachmaninoff and exileFT Weekend, June 2023

On Handel’s opera ‘Alcina’The TLS, July 2022

On Maria YudinaThe TLS, April 2022

On Blackness in classical music historyThe TLS, November 2021

On the ‘forever war’: the untold story of Georgian soldiers in AfghanistanThe Calvert Journal, November 2021

On ‘eight songs from isolation’, a lockdown operaThe Economist, October 2020