In the north of the Caucasus region, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, geography gets tricky. Georgia borders southern Russian republics with complicated names there, and in between lie autonomous regions such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Adjara, remnants of complex conflicts following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

There is probably no other author whose work covers as broad a literary range as that of the Roman poet Ovid. Born in Abruzzo in the year 43 B.C., he disappeared under mysterious circumstances 2,000 years ago. Before his death, he worked in almost every form of poetry, from love elegy to erotic didactic poetry, from elegiac letter to beauty recipe, from assiduous verse epic to tragedy and even curse poem.

When the very first antibiotic – penicillin – was developed, in the mid-20^th century, there were great expectations. The new active ingredient was able to kill off dangerous bacteria, unlocking possibilities of therapy for diseases that had previously been difficult to treat.