WRITERS OF DISASTER: Armenian Literature in the Twentieth Century

By Marc Nichanian

The volume consists of essays on four major twentieth-century Armenian authors: Yeghishé Charents, Gurgen Mahari, Zabel Esayan, and Vahan Totovents.

All four authors lived through the national revolution. For all four of them, "the national idea was a perverted and murderous one." Ironically, however, all four were condemned to death or exile precisely for nationalism, victims of Stalin's purges.

Nichanian addresses a burning question that historians and diarists have avoided for the better part of a century: "How are we to understand the link between this movement of national liberation and the extermination of the Ottoman Armenians during World War I?"

Gomidas Institute (2002)