GOODBYE, ANTOURA: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide

by Karnig Panian

When World War I began, Karnig Panian was only five years old, living among his fellow Armenians in the Anatolian village of Gurin.

This memoir offers the extraordinary story of what he endured in those years—as his people were deported from their Armenian community, as his family died in a refugee camp in the deserts of Syria, as he survived hunger and mistreatment in an orphanage.

Panian's memoir is a full-throated story of loss, resistance, and survival, but told without bitterness or sentimentality. His story shows us how even young children recognize injustice and can organize against it, how they can form a sense of identity that they will fight to maintain. He paints a painfully rich and detailed picture of the lives and agency of Armenian orphans during the darkest days of World War I.

Stanford University Press (2015)