The Caucasus, the great mountain range bounding Georgia, a republic in the South of the USSR, to the North and stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian, was known in early times as the Mountain of Tongues. Some 50 distinct languages and dialects are spoken in the region to this day, in addition to literary Georgian and Armenian. The variety and contrast that are typical of the area are reflected in this anthology of stories by modern Georgian writers. It includes works by Nodar Dumbadze, Archil Sulakauri, Otia Ioseliani, Guram Dochanashvili, Goderdzi Chokheli, as well as by the well-known Abkhazian author, Fazil Iskander and by the Tbilisi-born poet and prose writer Bulat Okudzhava. The two latter authors now live in Moscow. These are names that hardly need an introduction for they are virtually as well known abroad as they are in the Soviet Union.