Ravens Before Noah

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Glagoslav Publications B.V., Dec 20, 2019 - Fiction - 140 pages

This novel is set in the Armenian mountains sometime in 1915-1960. An old man and a new born baby boy escape from the Hamidian massacres in Turkey in 1894 and hide themselves in the ruins of a demolished and abandoned village. The village soon becomes a shelter for many others, who flee from problems with the law, their families, or their past lives. The villagers survive in this secret shelter, cut off from the rest of the world, by selling or bartering their agricultural products in the villages beneath the mountain.

Years pass by, and the child saved by the old man grows into a young man, Harout. He falls for a beautiful girl who arrived in the village after being tortured by Turkish soldiers. She is pregnant and the old women of the village want to kill the twin baby girls as soon as they are born, to wash away the shame...

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About the author (2019)

Susanna Harutyunyan (b. 1963) is one of the most acclaimed writers in Armenia, with eight published books so far and numerous publications in short story anthologies. She received her degree in philology from the Armenian State Pedagogical Institute named after H. Abovyan in 1983. She worked in the Press Committee of Armenia and for different periodicals. She received recognition for her novels, Map Without Land and Waters and Ravens Before Noah. For the latter she received Armenia's highest honor, the Presidential Prize for Literature in 2016. She is editor of Kayaran literary magazine and lives in Yerevan. Susanna's works have been translated into English, Persian, Greek, Romanian, Azerbaijani, German, Kazakh, and other languages.

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