Bohjalian’s ‘The Sandcastle Girls’ Named 2017 One Book, One San Diego Book Selection

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (A.W.)—San Diego’s KPBS Public Radio announced on Aug. 1 that Armenian-American author Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls was named the 2017 One Book, One San Diego book selection.

San Diego’s KPBS Public Radio announced on Aug. 1 that Armenian-American author Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls was named the 2017 One Book, One San Diego book selection.

“I am deeply honored by the selection…. San Diego is a wonderful reading community. I’ve made appearances there off and on over the years, and I’ve always been dazzled by the bookstores and the libraries and the readers,” Bohjalian told KPBS.

Bohjalian will make two One Book, One San Diego appearances on Sept. 12 and 13, the first of many One Book events held by KPBS and community partners that will run through December. KPBS will also be giving away 300 copies of The Sandcastle Girls at the inaugural San Diego Festival of Books, organized by The San Diego Union-Tribune in partnership with KPBS, at Liberty Station, on Aug. 26.

The Sandcastle Girls is a moving depiction of the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide told through the experiences of a group of very different individuals who find themselves in Ottoman Aleppo in 1915. At the heart of the novel is a love story between Armen Petrosian, a survivor of Turkish brutality, and Elizabeth Endicott, a Boston Brahmin who has traveled to Aleppo to perform relief work with her father.

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Sandcastle Girls, The Night Strangers, Skeletons at the Feast, and The Double Bind. His novel Midwives was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into more than 25 languages, and three of his novels have become movies. Bohjalian’s most recent novel, The Sleepwalker, was published in Jan. 2017.

Bohjalian’s awards include the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating Americans about the Armenian Genocide; the ANCA Arts and Letters Award for The Sandcastle Girls; and the Saint Mesrob Mashdots Medal; the New England Society Book Award for The Night Strangers; the New England Book Award; Russia’s Soglasie (Concord) Award for The Sandcastle Girls; a Boston Public Library Literary Light; a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Trans-Sister Radio; a Best Lifestyle Column for “Idyll Banter” from the Vermont Press Association; and the Anahid Literary Award.

2 Comments

  1. Dear Bohjalian,
    Heartiest congratulations for your dedicated book “The Sandcastle Girls”
    from all the Armenians every where on this suffering universe.
    Wishing you endless successes…waiting for more…

    Sylva Portoian, M.D.
    Pediatrician & Poet
    Winner of The Carnegie Poetry Prize, Spring 2009
    Sixteen Historical Poetry Books globally.

  2. I have a sneaky suspension that it was the Armenian readers who propelled this book on best seller list. What partly drives my suspension is the presentation of the book in Amazon.com. Initially the book was presented as derived from Bohjeiian’s ethnic experience with no mention of the Armenian Genocide. but later it did.

    Also, I had and still have a mixed feeling about the promotion of this book both by Armenian sources and by Doubleday, as a means to educate the public about the Armenian Genocide. A novel is a fictitious narrative of book length and cannot be a substitute for history. Admittedly Doubleday did a superb job in promoting this book on that account.

    Franz Werfel’s book is also a novel but the underlying theme is well documented. Antranig Zarougian has a novel titled “Love in Medz Yeghern” it is a superb narration about the eminent writer who Roupen Sevag who was a medical doctor by profession and talented painter as well.. While the novel is a figment of Antranig’s imagination but the characters and the story is real. I wish one could take the initiative and translate this book into English. The book makes for superb reading in Armenian. I am sure it would in English as well.

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