Bibliography
Twelve essential works and testimonies — novels of silenced women, the only literary eyewitness account of the Adana massacres, and the memoir of a childhood that no prison could erase.
12 works shown
Silihdar Partezner — The Gardens of Silihdar
Her masterpiece of memory: a radiant, tender reconstruction of her Üsküdar childhood and Armenian community life — written in French and Armenian, translated into English (Jennifer Manoukian, 2014).
Autobiography · Üsküdar · Armenian communityAverakneroun Mech — In the Ruins / Among the Ruins
Eyewitness reportage on the 1909 Adana massacres, commissioned by the Armenian Patriarchate. Burned churches, orphans, survivors’ testimony — the only such account written as literature. Translated into French, Turkish and English (AIWA Press, 2016).
Adana 1909 · Eyewitness · EssentialBarba Khachik — Uncle Khachik
Her unfinished magnum opus, published posthumously in Yerevan in 1966: 851 pages devoted to her beloved, Zorba-like uncle — the man who taught her to live before the world taught her to mourn.
Magnum opus · Unfinished · PosthumousIn the Waiting Room
Her first novel, serialized in the magazine Tsaghik — a portrait of young Armenian women suspended between convention and a modern life they can feel approaching but cannot yet enter.
Debut · Fin-de-siècle ConstantinopleGeghts Hantjar'ner — Phony Geniuses / Spurious Geniuses
A savage satirical novel aimed at literary pretenders — above all Diran Cherakian («Indra») — skewering arrogance, imitation and the cult of the false master.
Satire · Literary polemicAnkumit' Zhamereh — Hours of Agony
A claustrophobic psychological study of an unhappily married woman who comes to wish her husband dead — and finds a terrible agency in that wish.
Psychology · Marriage · Women’s inner lifeThe Last Cup
First serialized, then published in book form: a married woman’s affair with a married man is discovered — and she discovers that her greatest craving is to be struck, to feel alive.
Desire · Betrayal · The body in painVoghis Aksoryal — translated into English by G.M. Goshgarian (2014)
Essays and meditations written in the aftershock of 1915 — what exile does to a writer, to a woman, to a people who no longer have a country.
Exile · Aftermath of genocidePrometheus Unchained
Impressions of Soviet Armenia after her 1926 visit — a hymn to national resurrection that critics in the West dismissed as propaganda and she wrote as faith.
Soviet Armenia · Travel · HopeKrake Shapik — Shirt of Fire (also dated 1936)
An autobiographical novel that dares to show the dark, suffocating side of Scutari life — the counterpoint to the remembered gardens. Soviet critics called it slander of the past.
Autobiography · Darkness of homeLiterary criticism · Original in Western Armenian
A critical survey of the writers of her generation — the first systematic attempt by an Armenian woman to map the living literature of the nation.
Literary criticism · Canon-building11-page report for the Armenian Delegation, Paris Peace Conference (discovered 2014, Nubarian Library)
A lost document, rediscovered in Paris in 2014: her formal account of the kidnapping and forced conversion of more than 200,000 Armenian women and children during and after 1915.
Rediscovered 2014 · Women & children