Armenian Literature

In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.

Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past. In the next, the world—and Mariah’s life—is split into before and after. What follows, and the unconventional decisions Mariah makes, will affect her and her family forever.

During 1915 to 1923, one and a half million Armenian people were deported and killed in the most appalling ways comprehensible. They were ripped from their homes (in a land where they had lived for longer than history can tell, a land so old that many speculate it was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden) and sent off on death marches across the blistering Syrian Desert. They were shot on the thresholds of the houses where they were raising their children. They were butchered with swords in gruesome ways in order to dishearten those left alive.

If you want to discover the captivating history of Armenian history, then pay attention. Their story is tragic, but their survival is incredible. And that is what makes their tale so inspiring.

The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.

As World War I begins, Constantinople is a seething hornet's nest of corruption, crime, and prejudice. Tavid Kaloustian, a cunning and determined young Armenian, does whatever it takes to protect his family and friends from a quickly approaching genocide. Trained as a chemist to work in the silk industry, Tavid trades his knowledge for both survival and the hefty profit of the opium trade. He is a major player in the local black market, moving stealthily through enemy forces often disguised as one of “them”.

ARMENIA: A Journey Through History, a book by Dr. Arra S. Avakian, presents the reader a wealth of information about the Armenian people, their history, their significant events, their important places, and individuals who did much to make the Armenian nation what it is. The information is given in well over one hundred separate stories, each one complete in itself, concise, and easy to read and understand. Illustrations accompanying many of the vignettes lend extra vitality to the telling. Chapters Include: 1. The Land and its People, 2. Historical Events and Figures, 3. Mythology and ...

Swallows and Armenians is Karen Babayan’s timely introduction of this free-spirited and gifted family who inspired Arthur Ransome to write his first book of fiction for children; a book that has gone on to be a classic of Lake District mythology. The short stories in Swallows and Armenians are set in Coniston, Aleppo, Windermere, and Bradford and supported by a number of succinct essays by the author which introduce us to the turbulent history of the Armenian nation and its food, culture, and language.

What is it like to walk away from your home? To leave behind everything and everyone you’ve ever known? Poetic, sensitive, and based on a true family history, Lost Words follows a young Armenian boy who sets out to find refuge to the day he finally finds the courage to share his story.

Siberia, early seventies. The narrator, a thirteen-year-old orphan, saves Vardan, a young Armenian boy, from discrimination and being attacked by fellow Soviet students in their schoolyard. A friendship is born. When Vardan brings him home, the narrator enters a world of Armenian families living in the periphery of a prison where their husbands, sons, and fathers are detained. It is there, in the warmth of their home, that the narrator meets courage, love, and dignity—all of which will mark him for the rest of his life.

In 1975, a People's Militia homicide investigator is on a plane for Istanbul when it is hijacked by Armenian terrorists. Before the Turkish authorities can fulfill the hijackers' demands, the plane explodes in midair. Two investigators, a secret policeman and a homicide detective, are assigned to the case.

Her government wants her dead. The Republic of Turkey doesn’t want you to hear about her. Rosmerta Bedrosian is a 13-year-old girl living with her Armenian family in Eastern Anatolia in 1915. Frustrated by their declining fortunes, the Ottoman state needs a scapegoat. They find one in their Christian subjects and drive the Armenian population on death marches into the Syrian desert. Rosmerta witnesses acts of increasingly senseless violence and cruelty. How can she survive when everyone around her is dying?