Author Description

Product DescriptionA powerfully original, poetically wrought first novel about the disappearance of a village during the Armenian genocide begun in 1915-the debut of a brilliant literary stylist."Spectacularly gifted, tender, wise, and terrible in rage, Micheline Marcom has woven a heart-rending tapestry from the lost time, lost places, and lost voices of the Armenian genocide."-Junot D'azHere is a novel of import and style, set in 1915-1917, the years of the Ottoman Turkish government's campaign of unspeakable brutality that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Armenians. Through a series of chapters that have the weight and economy of poetry, Micheline Aharonian Marcom introduces us to the stories of Anaguil, an Armenian girl taken in by Turkish neighbors after the death of her parents and who now views the remains of her world through a Muslim veil; Sargis, a poet hidden away in his mother's attic, dressed in woman's clothing, and steadily going mad; Lucine, a servant and lover of the American consul, reviled by the villagers for the illusory privilege she enjoys; Maritsa, a rage-filled Muslim wife who leaves her husband while he is at the front and becomes a whore; and Dickran, an infant left behind under a tree on the long exodus from an Armenian village, whose tiny hands reach up to touch the stars, who dies with his name unrecorded. Through these lives, we witness the vanishing of a people.In pages replete with indelible images of beauty and horror, Marcom conjures the steam and the gossip of the hamam, the ghostly fragrance of rose petal preserves, and the metallic chill of fear. Her novel is an elegy to the final days of Orientalism and an elegant memorial to the victims of the twentieth century's first genocide. Together, the stories of these lives form a narrative mosaic-faceted, complex, exquisite in its detail, a devastating tableau.From Publishers WeeklyReading this heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel is a bit like reliving an extraordinarily long dream. The leaps in time, the abundance of plot lines, the casual occurrence of unspeakable events and the persistent flashbacks all give the text a distinctly dreamlike quality. But the book is based in fact: it is set in Turkey between 1915 and 1917, when the government organized the systematic massacre of the Armenian population (Hitler was later to imitate some of the Turkish techniques). Marcom's form emphasizes the nature of her subject the many stories within stories, intertwined lives, murders and madness reflect the intricate interdependencies of a nation. A few of the many protagonists are Anaguil, an Armenian girl sheltering with a Muslim family, trying to hold on to her culture; Sargis, a student hiding from the Turkish police in his mother's attic, writing poetry as he loses his mind; Lucine, a servant at the American embassy, and the consul's mistress; Rachel, who has known all of them and who speaks after her death from the bottom of a well; Maritsa, a Muslim woman who wishes she were a boy these characters and others tell their stories in interconnected chapters. This is a novel in which chronology stretches and loops, the tale returning again and again to the central reality of brutality, cruelty and loss. The highly mannered style manifests a debt to the postmodern novel and the fairy tale, resulting in something between a cry and a reminiscence. This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.Review“The fierce beauty of her prose both confronts readers with many breathtaking cruelties and carries us past them…But the novel is much more than a catalog of horrors, however brilliantly described. It is also about love and tenderness, the pleasures of custom and ritual, the moments of unexpected generosity and courage and, above all, the necessity of remembering—oneself, one’s family, one’s language, one’s history.”—Margot Livesey, T