500 Million Seconds is a novel about time that cannot be held on to-and about a generation that spent too long believing it could.
The protagonist is a successful, intelligent, driven man, one of those who managed to seize the opportunities of the 1990s and 2000s. Once he believed he was building his own life, in control of his choices and his future. But as the seconds tick away-five hundred million of them-the boundaries of reality begin to dissolve. Dreams turn into memories, memories into hallucinations, and in the mirrors he sees not the world but himself, losing the ability to tell meaning from illusion.
Running in parallel is the story of an entire generation-the "heroes of our time": entrepreneurs, executives, visionaries who once believed in the future and in themselves. Their story is not one of success, but of collective madness and the slow loss of resistance to chaos.
This is both a philosophical parable and a psychological novel, as well as a document of its era. George Japaridze writes with precision and grace, balancing cool irony with piercing humanity. His prose recalls Michael Cunningham and Ian McEwan, yet resonates with the depth of the Russian tradition of reflective realism.
