Novel
Retreat Without Song
Նահանջը առանց երգի
Shahan Shahnur · 1929
Synopsis
In Paris, in the twenties, Bédros, an Armenian survivor who has become Pierre, a retoucher in a photography studio, meets Jeanne, his “Nénette chérie”, a ward of the Nation. A love story that is something of a fable develops between them; the foreigner discovers sex there and changes as he enters the city, torn between his pleasures and nostalgia for back there, between an empty church and the temptation to forget everything.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in the Paris daily Haratch before being published in book form in 1929. It broke with the narrative of the catastrophe to tell of survival, settling in and the loss of self in a foreign city, alternating revolt, parody and poetry, in the manner of a silent film. Its success was immediate and lasting: people later spoke of a before and an after this book. It has been translated into English by Mischa Kudian, into Turkish in 2007, and into French only in 2009, under the direction of Krikor Beledian.
Who it is for
A novel in Western Armenian, available in French since 2009. It reads in a single sitting; some knowledge of Paris in the twenties helps in grasping its irony.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the founding novel of Armenian diaspora literature, and its author's only novel, which established itself from the moment of publication.