Narrative
In the Ruins
Աւերակներուն մէջ
Zabel Yesayan · 1911
Opening lines
Շոգենավը կտաներ մեզ դեպի Կիլիկիո նավահանգիստը, և այն վերջին գիշերը որ կանցկացնենք Միջերկրականի մեջ, զիս արհավիրքով, կանխակալ սարսափով կլցներ:
The steamer was taking us towards the port of Cilicia, and that last night we spent on the Mediterranean filled me with dread, with anticipatory terror.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from hy.wikisource.org
Synopsis
In July 1909, three months after the April massacres, a woman of letters arrives in Cilicia with a delegation charged with gathering the orphans. In Adana, she walks through the destroyed districts, visits the hospitals where mutilated children are being treated, listens to the widows, the old men and the few men who remained able-bodied, and tries to express the extent of a misfortune that she had found hard to believe as she approached the city.
Context
Zabel Yesayan left with the delegation of the Armenian patriarchate of Constantinople in charge of the orphans, stayed in Cilicia until September, then spent two years setting down in writing what she had seen. The massacres also inspired her to write articles, a short story and narratives that appeared the same year as the book. It was translated into Italian in 2008, into French in 2011 by Léon Ketcheyan, with an afterword by Gérard Chaliand, and into English in 2016 by G. M. Goshgarian.
Who it is for
A little over three hundred pages in French, with the translator's notes. It is not a novel but a testimony, written in the two years following the events.
Prizes and reception
The critic Hagop Ochagan judged it unequalled in Armenian letters, ancient and modern; Elif Shafak has made it one of her favourite books.