Novel
The Candidate
Թեկնածուն
Zareh Vorpuni · 1967
Synopsis
At the centre of the novel, a letter retraces the story of Vahakn: the deportation, with his mother, from their village in the Ottoman Empire, her death, then the child's adoption by a Turkish woman, Fatma, who abuses him. Grown up in France, he feels a stranger to himself there and unable to live after the trauma. The narrative plays with point of view and chronology, and questions how the survivor's testimony is constructed.
Context
The book appeared in Beirut in 1967 and forms one of the volumes of the cycle The Persecuted, begun in 1929. It bears two epigraphs, one from the Gospels, the other from Claudel's The Black Bird in the Rising Sun, which speak of the same crime: defiling the hearts of children. The author borrows from the nouveau roman to question survivors' accounts and the diaspora's discourse on trauma. Almost ignored on its release, for lack of readers of Western Armenian, it was translated into English in 2016, then into French in 2021.
Who it is for
A short but demanding novel, which does not narrate in chronological order and often changes voice. Some scenes of abuse suffered by a child are difficult to read.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Marc Nichanian as one of the most representative novels of the Armenian diaspora, and the first by its author to be translated into English.