President Zurabishvili Opens Janri Kashia Library

President Salome Zurabishvili opened on Thursday the Janri Kashia archive at the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, which will house among other articles the personal archive of her late husband, the French-Georgian writer, historian and journalist Janri Kashia, the President’s press office announced.

There are more than 2,000 unique items in the archive, included previously-banned literature, books by Georgian emigrants, periodicals in Georgian and foreign languages, as well as Kashia’s personal archive.

Kashia was born in Tbilisi in 1939, and during the 1960s was a television presenter and taught philosophy, history and art history at the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts. He received political asylum in France in the 1980s, and became a French citizen in 1992. During the 80s, he worked as a journalist in Paris and Munich. Kashia and President Zurabishvili married in 1993, and he returned to Georgia in 2004. He and the President have two children together. Kashia died in March 2012, at the age of 72.

“Today is a very happy day for me because Janri Kashia’s dream was fulfilled,” the President said during a ceremony on Thursday.

“[Kashia’s] soul is also here, in this library,” the President added, and encouraged all those who are interested in his works to come visit the collection.

On May 8, Kashia would have turned 80 years old, and he “would have been happy to have such a gift for his birthday,” the President said.