Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

“Armenpress” introduces 16th bestseller books list

By

10:38, 3 May, 2013

YEREVAN, MAY 3, ARMENPRESS. The book of poems by Armenian poetess Anahit Taryan titled “The Sunny Starfall” tops the bestseller books list introduced by “Armenpress” News Agency. Popular “Masha and the Bear” tale occupies the second position of the rating. The Armenian version of the prominent Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli’s “Stone 717494Dreams” published by “Graber” publishing house occupies the third place in the bestseller books list. Artak Vardanyan translated the novel into Armenian. Aram Ananyan authored the preface of the book and the publication was edited by Seyranuhi Geghamyan. Aylisli’s book is followed by Hovhannes Tumanyan’s tales. “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez occupies the fifth position of the list. Bakur Karapetyan’s “The Sumgait Diary” occupies the sixth position. This book is based upon actual events.

“Stone Dreams” by Akram Aylisli, but published by “Nork” publishing house occupies the seventh position of the bestseller books list introduced by “Armenpress”. Ashot Aghababyan’s “Lonely” novel takes the eighth place. ”The Book of Lamentations” by outstanding Armenian author St. Gregory of Narek occupies the ninth position this time. This masterpiece by St. Gregory of Narek has always been included in our bestseller books list. And the Armenian version of Akram Aylisli’s “Stone Dreams” published by “Edit-Print” publishing house has appeared in the final position of the Bestseller Books List introduced by “Armenpress” News Agency.

If Only Everyone: A movie about Karabakh war wins awards at Beijing Int’l Festival

By

Vahagn Simonyan

A movie of joint Armenian-Russian production telling about the Karabakh war has won two top prizes at the 3rd International Film Festival in Beijing, International-Film-Festival-Beijing-Vahagn-SimonyanChina.

According to the official website of the Festival, which ended on April 23, the movie, ‘If Only Everyone’, by Natalija Bieliauskiene, received awards for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ (Vahagn Simonyan) and ‘Best Music’ (Vahagn Hayrapetyan).

The plot of the 94-minute movie weaves around the daughter of a Russian officer who was killed in the Karabakh war; she comes to Armenia 20 years after her father’s death and is trying to find his lost grave to plant the birch seedling she has brought along from home.

The authors of ‘If Only Everyone’ stress that while being a recollection of the 1992-1994 hostilities in and around Karabakh, the movie is more about peace than war and is a unique call for forgiveness and tolerance.

‘If Only Everyone’ has also won awards at other international film festivals, including at Golden Apricot in Yerevan, and was on the long list of the Oscar Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film in 2012.

“The Sandcastle Girls” Genocide novel to be released in Russian

By

April 24, 2013 – 16:46 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – New York Times Best-Selling author Chris Bohjalian’s novel on the Armenian Genocide, “The Sandcastle Girls” will be published in Russian to be released in Moscow.

155641The initiative was widely supported by the Armenian entrepreneurs in Russia.

The novel has received stellar reviews from dozens of publications nationwide, including the Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, and People Magazine. It was announced as the Book of the Week on Oprah.com and is currently seventh on the New York Times Best-Sellers List.

In his 15th book, “The Sandcastle Girls,” Bohjalian brings us on a very different kind of journey. The spellbinding tale travels between Aleppo, Syria in 1915 and Bronxville, New York in 2012, telling a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author’s Armenian heritage, making it his most personal novel to date.

“THE GREEDY SPARROW: AN ARMENIAN TALE” WINS 2013 NAUTILUS SILVER BOOK AWARD

By

Belmont, MA and Teaneck, NJ, USA; April 19, 2013 —

“The Greedy Sparrow: An Armenian Tale” has won the 2013 Nautilus Silver Book Award in the Children’s Picture Book category (readers 3 to 6 yrs.). The tale is retold by Lucine Kasbarian, illustrated by Maria Zaikina, and published by Marshall Cavendish (now Amazon Children’s Books).

The Greedy SparrowNautilus Book Awards“The Greedy Sparrow” is an English-language retelling of a traditional Armenian folk tale about a bird who travels the countryside, encounters natives practicing traditional folkways, and gets a comeuppance for his trickery. Author Kasbarian and illustrator Zaikina convey ethnic authenticity in their adaptation of this tale from the Armenian oral tradition. The NJ and MA-based Kasbarian is a children’s author known for her book, “Armenia: A Rugged Land, an Enduring People”: http://www.amazon.com/Armenia-Rugged-Land-Enduring-People/dp/0382394585 .Moscow-based Zaikina is an illustrator beloved for her companion animation to singer Hasmik

Harutyunyan’s folk lullaby, Agna Oror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA4K1Cjy3L8 .

“Witnessing near-annihilation and exile as a result of the Armenian Genocide,” said Kasbarian, “my surviving grandparents felt that our people might one day become extinct. From that grew a profound desire to preserve as much of our culture as possible, such as our language, songs, dances, cuisine and stories. While her infant children perished in the death marches, my paternal grandmother managed to smuggle out the deeds belonging to our family’s confiscated property. Those were the only material possessions that made it to America. Thus, non-material possessions, such as what was carried in memories, become precious links to our identity and past.  “The Greedy Sparrow” tale was one such heirloom, and UNESCO calls such treasures part of a people’s “intangible cultural heritage.”

“The Greedy Sparrow” was also named a 2012 Honor Book in the Storytelling World Awards. It was in School Library Journal’s “Fuse #8 Production” blog’s “100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2011” and in the Children’s Literature Network’s “Snipp Snapp Snute” blog’s “Favorite Folktales published in 2011.”  Further information is available at the author’s website: http://www.lucinekasbarian.com .

The Nautilus Awards recognize books that promote positive social change, spiritual development and conscious living as they stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities for a better world. Usually, one Gold and one or more Silver awards are given annually in each of 24 Adult and 4 Children’s/Young Adult categories.  Formal announcements about all Nautilus Award winners will be made at BookExpo America (May 30-June 1) in New York City: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/ .

The Nautilus Award is named for the pearl-lined mollusk that contains spiral chambers of increasing size, built by this sea inhabitant to accommodate its growth. According to the organization, the nautilus symbolizes ancient wisdom and expanding horizons, as well as the elegance of nature and a continual growth of understanding and awareness.  Past Nautilus Award winners have included the Dalai Lama, Barbara Kingsolver, Dr. Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra, among others.  For further information, please visit: http://www.nautilusbookawards.com .

#  #  #

 Following are two images to accompany the press release:

1) the jacket cover art for the book: http://media.northjersey.com/images/GreedySparrow_040711_ts_tif_.jpg

2) the Nautilus Silver Award seal: http://www.press53.com/Nautilus_silver_award.jpg

Nancy Kricorian about her new book and Diaspora Quartet – INTERVIEW

By

April 08, 2013 | 00:01

A new book by Armenian-American writer Nancy Kricorian was published this March. All The Light There Was novel is telling a story of Armenian girl who survived the Armenian Genocide and is building her life in Paris under Nazi occupation. In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am Nancy 147742Kricorian told about her new book.

Your new book All The Light There Was is about an Armenian girl who lives in Paris under Nazi occupation and her brother joined resistance. How the idea came to you? Is it based on actual person? Did you know any Armenians who joined resistance or lived in Paris during the World War II?

When I was researching a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary character in my second novel, Dreams of Bread and Fire, I read about “non-state actors” using political violence–everything from the Weather Underground to the Red Army Brigade to the French Resistance. While researching the French Resistance, I came across a 1984 French documentary film called Terrorists in Retirement, which was about a resistance group made up of immigrant workers and led by Armenian poet Missak Manouchian. As I learned more about Manouchian, it started me thinking about what it would have been like for Armenian Genocide survivors, who had rebuilt their lives and communities in Paris, to see the Nazis marching into their adopted city.

I met several Armenians in Paris who had been active in the French Resistance, among them Arsene Tchakarian of the Manouchian Group and Nazareth Peshdikian, who was in the Hunchak resistance.

In your interviews you said you had done a great research before writing the novel. You spoke to Armenians in France and read books about their memories. Surviving the Genocide they went to France for new safe life but appeared in trouble again. What do you think made them join Resistance, how did they find strength to fight again?

I spoke with and read about a number of Armenians who had lived through the war years in Paris–and there were many different responses. Some people joined the Resistance, some people kept their heads down just trying to survive, and there were a few who did worse. I was impressed to hear that the editor of the Armenian newspaper Haratch decided to suspend publication for the duration of the Occupation rather than submit his work to collaborationist censors. How people responded had to do with many factors, including their personal histories, their temperaments and their political affiliations.

Audiobooks are becoming more popular. All The Light There Was has been recorded as well. What do you think about audiobooks? Is it just a kind of modern device or it will replace books in the future?

I am thrilled that there is an audiobook available of All The Light There Was, particularly because the actor who recorded it, Suzanne Toren, is so talented and because she was able to read the Armenian phrases with such an excellent accent. It is wonderful that the audio book is available so that people who are vision impaired, who are taking long car rides, or who have reading disabilities can have access to the novel. There is also an e-book that can be downloaded onto a reading device, which seems to be the wave of the future.

As far as I know, your next book is telling about an Armenian family in Beirut during the Lebanese Civilian War. You are writing about Armenians living in different countries. What do they have in common? Are there any traits of character typical for all your heroes?

My first novel, Zabelle, is a fictionalized account of my grandmother’s life as an Armenian Genocide survivor and immigrant bride. My second novel, Dreams of Bread and Fire, is about someone of my generation coming to terms with the hidden history of the Genocide that shapes her family’s life. The third novel, All The Light There Was, is about Armenians in Paris during the Nazi Occupation. And the next one will be about Armenians who leave Beirut during the Civil War to come to New York. This is my Armenian Diaspora Quartet.

Please, tell a little about your family. Where are your ancestors coming from? What Armenian traditions have you preserved in your own family?

My paternal grandparents are from Cilicia–my grandfather immigrated from Adana to Watertown in 1911. My grandmother was from Mersin, and survived the deportations, ending up as an orphan at Ras Al-Ain in the Syrian desert.

My connection to Armenian culture is primarily through literature and the arts and my friendships with other Armenian-American writers and artists. I also do some Armenian cooking. This past weekend I baked cheoreg [sweet Easter bread –ed.] for Easter.

Varujan Vosganian’s “The Book of Whispers” causes troubles to Turks

By

16:03, 6 March, 2013

BUCHAREST, MARCH 6, ARMENRPESS. On March 21, Varujan Vosganian’s “The Book of Whispers” will be the honorary guest at the Paris Book Salon in Romania. Romanian 27 writers will present their works at the Book Salon, including Varujan Vosganian 710617with his famous novel “The Book of Whispers”. “The Book of Whispers” tells about the Armenian Genocide and about the horrors of the 20th century. Young Turks, fascism, Stalinism, Chaushesku left their traqces on the minds and the souls of the people till now.

“The book of whispers” was published in 2009 in Bucharest and became the winner of the highest scores and won the most awards of the publishing year. Just three months after the publication of the novel, the Spanish Pre-Textos publishing house acquired the right to publish it in Spanish from Romanian Polirom publishing house.

The Spanish version was published in the early 2011, by Joaquín Garrigós’ translation, and in August of the same year, it was released in Argentina by the presence of the author and translator.

That’s why the book caused so much troubles to the Turkish authorities, which spare no effort to prevent its further translations and publications. The Turkish Embassy to Romania sent a note of complaint to the Romanian authorities, when a meeting dedicated to the book and its author was organized in one of the country’s museums.

Uncensored Edition of British Blue Book Sheds Light on Armenian Genocide

By

http://www.gomidas.org/books/index.htm

Ames Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce [Uncensored Edition], edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian

Blue book bryce_180In 1916 the British Parliament published a “Blue Book” that identified the events of 1915–16 as a systematic effort to exterminate the Armenian people. The Blue Book has been one of the most solid and influential sources on the Armenian Genocide. A critical, uncensored edition, edited and with an introduction by Ara Sarafian, has now been published by the Gomidas Institute.
Viscount James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee were commissioned to prepare the Blue Book, which is formally known as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916. Toynbee carefully compiled and verified dozens of eyewitness accounts from different parts of the Ottoman Empire. These accounts provided the basis for Bryce’s brilliant thesis on the Genocide, published while the crime was still in progress.
The book includes eyewitness accounts from United States consular and missionary sources, as well as the testimony of German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Greek, Kurdish, and Armenian witnesses.
The original publication was full of blanks: the names of many people and places were obscured in order to safeguard sources still in the Ottoman Empire. The names remain obscured in facsimile editions that have been published over the years. Now Sarafian has restored the obscured names.
In his introduction, Sarafian takes issue with the repeated assertions of Turkish nationalist authors, who claim that the Blue Book was a British propaganda fabrication. He demonstrates the intellectual pedigree of the work. He shows exactly how testimonies were collected, authenticated, and then used in the book.
Generations of official historians of Turkey, such as Enver Zia Karal (Ankara University), Salahi Sonyel (British historian and public activist), Ismail Binark (Director of Ottoman archives, Ankara), Sinasi Orel (director of a much publicized project on declassifying documents on Ottoman Armenians), Kamuran Gurun (former diplomat), Mim Kemal Oke, Justin McCarthy, and others have cited the Blue Book and have insisted that it lacks credibility.
Sarafian has located Toynbee’s original manuscript, Toynbee’s correspondence with his sources, and most of the original reports, which were copied and sent to London. They can still be found at the Public Record Office (Kew), Bodleian Library (Oxford), National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), and the Houghton Library (Cambridge, Mass.) He has established that the compilers were meticulous in their verification of sources.
According to the Times Literary Supplement (London), “This work emerges from Ara Sarafian’s examination as documentation of a high order. . . . Sarafian convincingly rebuts the claims that there was any falsification, or that any of the documents was one-sided British propaganda.”
Lord Avebury of the British House of Lords has welcomed the publication of this critical edition of the Blue Book. Excoriating the present-day British government for refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, “ostensibly for a lack of evidence,” Lord Avebury notes that “the British Foreign Office itself published such evidence as early as 1916. . . . Ara Sarafian should be commended for making a critical edition of The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire available to the public.”
Toynbee, who went on to be a major historian in his own right, was deeply moved by his research on the Genocide. In his 1967 memoir, Acquaintances, Toynbee wrote: “My study [of the Armenian Genocide] . . . left an impression on my mind that was not effaced by the still more cold-blooded genocide, on a far larger scale, that was committed during the Second World War by the Nazi.
“Any great crime—private or public, personal or impersonal—raises a question that transcends national limits; the question goes to the heart of human nature itself. My study of the genocide that had been committed in Turkey in 1915 brought home to me the reality of Original Sin,” Toynbee concluded.
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916 complements the Gomidas Institute’s Armenian Genocide Documentation Series, which to date includes four volumes of eyewitness accounts: Days of Tragedy in Armenia (Rev. Henry Riggs, Harpoot); “Turkish Atrocities” (twenty-one reports compiled by James Barton); Marsovan 1915 (the diary of Bertha Morley); and The German, the Turk and the Devil Made a Triple Alliance (the diary of Tacy Atkinson, Harpoot).
The Uncensored Edition of the Blue Book was published with the generous support of Dr. Rostom Stepanian and the Committee for the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide (London).
For a report on the launch of this book at the House of Lords, click here.

ISBN 1-903656-51-6

(2nd edition 2005)

xxii + 677 pages, hardback, map (insert), index.

Price: UK£45.00 / US$70.00 plus shipping.

To order contact books@gomidas.org or books@garodbooks.com.

Table of contents

Norm Naimark, Orhan Pamuk on Armenian genocide, Turkish denial

By

Norm Naimark

“ThiOrhan Panukrty thousand Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do.”

After Turkish author Orhan Pamuk made those remarks in 2005, rallies were held to burn his books and a hate campaign forced him to flee the country.  When he returned, the future Nobel laureate faced a criminal trial.

He stood his ground:  “What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo. But we have to be able to talk about the past.”

Norm Naimark would agree:  “A healthy national consciousness cannot abide nasty secrets hidden away in a locked drawer.”

For Turkey, there are practical consequences to the government’s official denial of genocide – scholars have been intimidated into doing research, denied access to research, and governments held hostage.

Naimark has edited a new volume of essays, just released by Oxford University Press: A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. After reading this book, no one will be able to deny the Armenian genocide.  [Note:  If you want to see how bad it was, do an image search on google for “Armenian genocide” — I will not use those photos. They are dehumanizing.]

For Naimark, whose provocative Stalin’s Genocides was widely discussed and critically praised, a critical question is how, in fact, do these frenzies happen?

Context is everything.  “It is not too strong to state that war serves as a breeding ground for genocide,” he writes in his preface.  War provides justifications and possibilities.

“In the minds of Turkish nationalists, the Armenians’ traditional designation as gâvur (infidels) took on some of the elements of race prejudice and was reinforced by popular resentment of alleged Armenian wealth and treachery. That ‘Christians’ had driven the Ottomans out of southeastern Europe during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and now threatened the integrity of the Anatolian lands of the Turks from outside and within made the Armenian threat even more dangerous from the Young Turk point of view.”  The Young Turk ideology claimed the racial superiority of Turks to Armenians.

Envy and greed also play a role.  A trigger is often rapid status reversals, “especially when class and ethnicity are both involved” as well as racial and religious prejudices.

Rarely does genocide fix itself exclusively on one set of victims – in this case, Anatolia’s Assyrians were also targets; so were Greeks.naimark-200x300

According to Naimark, “the whirlwind of killing pulls in more and more victims and implicates an increasing number of assailants.”

Here’s what I find interesting:  Genocide happens at a number of levels of government, each with their own methods of implementation and decision-making.   “Every case of genocide is in some measure local,” he writes.

“Recent research on mass killing indicates that the crime of genocide needs to be thought of as occurring at various levels of society: at the very top, where decisions are taken that lead to mass murder; at the ‘meso-level,’ where regional officials and their accomplices, the police and military, implement orders or interpret signals from the political leadership that lead to genocide; and at the most basic local level of society, where individuals participate in the killing, steal from the victims, move into their houses, or witness the depredations. Sometimes, locals try to save individuals and families, or protest against the deportation or murder of their neighbors, usually in vain.”

Genocide is not an “event” but a process – one that follows “unwritten rules of historical behavior.”  The deportation and killing of Ottoman Armenians began in the spring of 1915 and accelerated over the next six months – but it wasn’t truly finished until the early 1920s, in the face of outside stabilizing political events.

The end product was the destruction of the Armenian community in Anatolia – as in most cases of genocide, the events took place in full view of the international community,” writes Naimark. In this case, the great powers were at war, and Realpolitik trumped humanitarian considerations.

As a result is a haunting betrayal of responsibility: “The conscience of contemporary world society is haunted by images of doomed Armenian women and children, wandering aimlessly in the Anatolian plateau, mad with hunger and grief, and by photographs of rows of corpses of murdered Armenian men and boys, guarded casually by Turkish soldiers.”

And the perps? W.H.  Auden put it best:

All if challenged would reply
– ‘It was a monster with one red eye,
A crowd that saw him die, not I. —

 

Blue Book on Armenian issue re-sent to Turkish deputies

By

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Vercihan Ziflioğluvercihan.ziflioglu@hurriyet.com.tr

A group of intellectuals have re-sent copies of Lord James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee’s “Blue Book,” which relates the Ottoman-era Armenian unrest in Turkey in 1915, to n_41513_4the Turkish Parliament’s 550 lawmakers following a failed attempt to do so four years ago.

The group, which is sending the book to the deputies via the state-controlled postal service PTT, is hoping to draw attention to freedom of speech. “A ban on reading has reached schools,” said Ragıp Zaraoklu, a publisher, at an Istanbul press meeting on the evening of Feb. 19. Zarakolu made the comments in relation to several recent attempts to bar some world classics and local works of literature from schools’ reading lists.

Şükrü Elekdağ, then-Parliamentary Speaker Köksal Toptan prevented deliveries of the books four years ago when they were sent by cargo, Zarakolu said.
“In a bid to point at a rising ban on books and [overcome what happened four years ago], we find it meaningful to start efforts from this point,” he said.
If the deputies cannot receive the books from the PTT, the group plans to distribute them directly at the gate of the Parliament building.
The book was re-printed by the Gomidas Institute four years ago upon the efforts of historian Ara Sarafyan, who was also present at the Feb. 19 meeting.

Sociologist İsmail Beşikçi said the archives in Turkey would never be trustable if the “denialist” policies on the issue continued.
“The Blue Book,” also known as “The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire” is a compilation of statements by eyewitnesses from other countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland during 1915-1916.

The book has been criticized as British wartime propaganda to build up sentiment against the Central Powers by some Western academics and Turkish political parties.

First Armenian bestseller books rating published

By

12:42, 18 January, 2013

YEREVAN, JANUARY 18, ARMENPRESS. “Armenpress” News Agency publicizes the first Yerevan bestseller fiction books rating. As a result of the first inquiry it turned out that “Tales” by Hovhannes Toumanyan tops the rating of the bestseller books in the bookstores of Yerevan during the period of the previous seven days.

“The Book of Lamentations” by the prominent Armenian author Gregory of Narek occupies the second position. As to the Armenian translations, than “The Alchemist” Paulo Coelho and “Tales” by Hans Christian Andersen are the most sold books of the Yerevan bookstores.

“The Book of Whispers” by contemporary Armenian writer Varujan Voskanian occupies the fifth position. “The Book of Whispers” is followed by “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller.

“The Bastard of Istanbul” by contemporary Turkish writer Elif Şafak is among the bestsellers of the Yerevan bookstores. Elif Şafak book occupies the seventh position in the rating, which is followed by “Farewell Tsit” by Aram Pachyan. The classic authors are also in the centre of attention of the Armenian audience. Nar-Dos’s “Works” took the ninth place. And “Enoch’s Eye” book by Garegin Khanjyan end up the rating of Top Ten Bestsellers.