Caucasus: in the wake of warriors by Nicholas Griffin

Slobs and psychopaths with Georgia on their mind

I have never met anyone who has failed to fall in love with Tbilisi. It's a potent amalgam of place – tsarist grandeur, Turkish picturesqueness, leafy grace, dark-browed, dignified people and the dramatic interplay between a history and culture that not even 70 years of Soviet dominion could extinguish. Yet, for some reason (because literary types fall at the hurdle of Georgia's drink-fuelled hospitality?), books dealing with this side of the Caucasus are rare.

Nicholas Griffin's Caucasus: in the wake of warriors focuses on Dagestan and Chechnya. But, since neither proves safe to visit, he settles for what he can find in the rivalrous states – Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia – on the mountains' southern slopes. The myth that fires him is that of Imam Shamil, the "Lion of Dagestan", who waged guerrilla war on tsarist invaders in the 19th century. He tries to "measure the effect one man can have on his nation's history 150 years after his death". After journeying for many months, he concludes that the conflict in Chechnya is a direct result of Shamil's war.

As travel-writing with historical digressions, his account follows a well-worn path, but does not cohere. He has read history books, and relishes the chance to spin a yarn, but one never knows how much of his tale is authentic, and how much hagiography. Imam Shamil was clearly both a military genius and a sadistic psychopath, and his eventual fate as a hostage of the tsar has pathos – as does the story of his bookish son, Jamal al-Din, who went native in St Petersburg and couldn't handle his enforced return to his rough tribal roots. Griffin's account of Shamil's hostage-taking is balanced by Shamil Basayev's brutal hostage-taking in 1990s Chechnya; thus indeed does history repeat itself.

So far, so neat. But the framework resembles nothing so much as TV's Castaway programme. Griffin is a travel-writer in the contemporary mould, more interested in the dynamics of his group than the lands through which they move. He finds his friends fascinating and funny; to me they're just boring slobs. Occasionally he looks out of his car window long enough to mint a cliché (the Kura river runs through Tbilisi "like a tress of hair running down a lady's back"), but mostly his gaze stays on his mates, one of whom, God help us, is making a film. From time to time he remarks that he's interviewing government leaders and intellectuals, but their thoughts seldom rate a mention.

For so unprofessional an expedition, it comes as a surprise to learn that Griffin and his friends were insured for a cool $5m. Peter Nasmyth wasn't insured for a penny, but the revised edition of his Georgia: in the mountains of poetry (Curzon Press, £14.99) reasserts his position as author of the best book on post-Soviet Georgia.

In contrast to Griffin, Nasmyth is prepared to take risks – hanging out with mafiosi and walking through minefields to reach that part of western Georgia that has bloodily seceded. Whereas Griffin finds little of interest in the Khevsur high Caucasus, Nasmyth presents a riveting portrait of an animistic rural culture. And if, too, he likes to wallow in mythology, he does so as an honorary Georgian, not as a gawping outsider.

The greatest strength of Nasmyth's account lies in its 20-year canvas: he got to know Georgia in Soviet times and has gone back repeatedly to chart its progress – and also its decline. Photographing everything from shop-fronts to historic icons and luxury hotels, he gives us some extraordinary before-and-after snaps showing the ravages of war. His quirky prose may cry out for a copy-editor, but at its best it's powerfully evocative, whether describing the dusty majesty of a desert monastery, the dewy brilliance of a field of flowers or the dangerous look in a young mafioso's eye.

He is clear-eyed about the new Georgians' cherished myths: he sees their toasting ceremonies for the drink-sodden bore they are, and finds their daredevil driving just plain stupid. But he empathises passionately with their determination to engage with the modern world. Stalin's homeland could not wish for a wiser champion.

Michael Church