“A Dog in Georgia” is Lauren Grodstein’s sixth novel under her own name, following the breakout success of “We Must Not Think of Ourselves,” a World War II novel set in Warsaw. The current narrative is also set in Eastern Europe — it’s that Georgia — but the history that affects the plot is much more recent: 2023’s wave of large-scale protests against the government’s increasing authoritarianism.

The premise of the novel — the means for transporting us to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi — is an original one. As the title says, there’s a dog in Georgia, a wonderful, fluffy white dog who worked as a crossing guard at an elementary school, and this dog is lost, or perhaps kidnapped. Amy Webb of New York City has been following the situation on YouTube, donating money to an organization called J

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