Short stories
Նորավէպեր եւ պատմուածքներ
Not translated into English
Levon Pashalian · 1943
Synopsis
Nearly twenty short stories and tales, written for the press from 1888 and collected late. They move from the closed-in houses of Constantinople and the lifestyle of rich families to the ardent, dissolute nights of Paris, then to the silent expanse of the sea. Among them are La Voisine, Le Dernier Baiser, L'Habit neuf, Le Vœu du prêtre and Les Pigeons, attentive to what the characters feel rather than to what they do.
Context
The author's stories, published in the Armenian newspapers and reviews of Constantinople from 1888 and through the 1890s, remained scattered until Archag Tchobanian gathered them. He prepared the volume while his friend, a refugee in Vichy, was living his last years, and the book appeared in Paris, from the Araxe press, in the year of the author's death. These realist short stories, marked by a certain sadness and by broken lives, are praised for their keen observation and their unadorned narration.
Who it is for
Short narratives in Western Armenian, to be taken separately. It helps to know a little of the world of the Armenians of Constantinople before 1915.
Prizes and reception
The collection that at last made known one of the masters of Western Armenian realist short fiction, studied ever since for its language and its descriptions.