Awelum, a rebellious thinker and restless lover of several women, poet, and family man, is deeply hurt when he is abandoned by his Moscow mistress Sonja. While his wife Melania patiently supports him in Tbilisi, he risks exposing his secret meetings with his true love, the Parisian Slavic scholar Françoise, to the KGB. Yet, despite his love for Europe embodied in her, he cannot detach himself from the cultural roots of his homeland Georgia. Instead, his lover will "carry the seed of love from here, out of the moldy darkness of prison dungeons into the free world." This captivating novel unfolds against the backdrop of the civil war in Tbilisi during the years 1991/92. By depicting the longing for freedom and the inability to live with it, Awelum becomes a symbol of the struggle.