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Invisible Scars That Peacekeepers Carry
A Soldier’s Burden centers around a Georgian peacekeeper in Afghanistan who forms an unexpected bond with a woman with her own history of violence. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
The idea for the novel arose from a desire to explore the invisible scars that peacekeepers carry with them. Living in a country like Georgia, which has seen its share of conflicts, I wanted to create a story that would transcend the borders of the battlefield and show us how profoundly difficult it is to return to oneself after the experience of war. I wanted to move beyond the battlefield and into the quiet, often painful struggle of returning to normal life.
What interested you about exploring John’s inner conflict?
John represents the quiet soldier—the one who is disciplined on the outside but crumbling on the inside. I was drawn to the contrast between his outward duty and his internal chaos. I wanted to explore how resilience can sometimes feel like a burden. As John would say: ‘Be so free that love may never be restricted for you. Freedom is to be in God’s right, which shakes off everything superfluous from you and leaves you with true love.’ This captures the essence of his journey toward finding his true self amidst the remnants of war.
How did you balance romance with the realities of war and trauma?
I believe trauma creates a unique kind of vulnerability. John and Sharon aren’t looking for a fairytale; they are looking for recognition. Their romance isn’t about escaping reality, but about finding someone who understands their darkness. It is a connection built on shared understanding, where Sharon’s perspective is central: ‘Faithfulness is pure gold, which carves the treasure of love. Before you die—love!’ This shows that their bond is a refuge, not a distraction from their trauma.
If John and Sharon could each offer readers one lesson from their journeys, what do you think they would say?
John would likely say: ‘It is not a weakness to admit that you are not the same person you were before.’ Sharon would add: ‘You don’t have to carry your past alone; sometimes, the strongest act of courage is letting someone else hold part of your burden.’ Their journey teaches us that love and compassion are the only true forces capable of defeating the hatred and resentment that war leaves behind.
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Natia Khaduri’s novel “A Soldier’s Burden” has won the 2024 International Impact Book Awards in Contemporary Fiction.
It is also a nominee for several awards at the 2025 International Book Awards.
In this novel, author Natia Khaduri explains the need and importance of sincere relationships: love, betrayal, loyalty, disappointment, forgiveness, and faith form the knot, which interacts to create the “big feeling.”
In Natia Khaduri’s novels, the importance of God’s presence in human life is always clearly presented. The writer and poet recently moved to America and is ready to write a new “adventure”. Her homeland is “beautiful SAKARTVELO-Georgia”.
“Right of freedom is being under the right of God, who purifies you from all excess, and what is left is pure love”.
A Soldier’s Burden
A Soldier’s Burden, by Natia Khaduri, translated by Mzia Kvirikasvili Lawrence, follows Colonel John Kartvelishvili, a Georgian peacekeeper in Afghanistan, whose military duty is entangled with prayer, moral exhaustion, and an unexpected bond with Sharon, a woman carrying her own history of violence, exile, faith, and maternal grief. What begins as a war-zone encounter becomes a story of restrained love, spiritual endurance, and the terrible cost of surviving when the heart has been repeatedly conscripted into pain.
I was most struck by how openly the novel lets its characters think and feel. John and Sharon don’t simply speak to each other; they argue with God, with memory, with the brutal arithmetic of war. The book has a devotional intensity that gives even ordinary gestures, a letter, a touch, a saved object, the weight of a sacrament. Sometimes the prose feels less like conventional realism and more like a long confession whispered beside a battlefield.
The emotional force of the book comes from its refusal to make love easy. Khaduri writes love as burden, refuge, debt, punishment, and grace, sometimes all in the same breath. The translation occasionally carries a raw, uneven cadence, but that roughness also gives the novel its unique feel; the sentences often feel bruised rather than polished, and that suits a story about people who have lived through more than language can neatly hold.
This book will speak most strongly to readers of military fiction, Christian fiction, war drama, romance, and women’s fiction. Readers who appreciate the spiritual suffering and moral questioning in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns may find a related ache here, though Khaduri’s novel is more prayerful and more openly philosophical. A Soldier’s Burden is a wounded love story with a soldier’s discipline and a mourner’s soul.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0CW1FWNH4
