NEW YORK—The publishing house HarperCollins recently announced the paperback release of Garin K. Hovannisian’s Family of Shadows: A Century of Murder, Memory, and the Armenian American Dream, the dramatic history of the Hovannisian family—of Kaspar, a genocide survivor and a soldier of General Antranig; Richard, the historian and pioneer of Armenian studies; and Raffi, the repatriate citizen and first foreign minister of the Republic of Armenia.
Family of Shadows, which has accompanied its author on a year-long tour across the United States and Canada, has received strong critical praise. “Hovannisian brings a historian’s rigor, a poet’s lyricism, and a native son’s passion to this remarkable book,” wrote Samuel G. Freedman, columnist for the New York Times. David Ignatius of the Washington Post called it “one of modern history’s great unexamined stories.”
The book has also been translated into the Armenian language by Samvel Mkrtchyan, the editor and translator of James Joyce’s Ulysses into Armenian. The translation, titled Gerdastan Stverats, was unveiled on Sept. 6 at the Yeghishe Charents House Museum in Yerevan. “It draws you from page to page with a magnetic force,” said Levon Ananyan, the president of the Writers’ Union of Armenia, on the occasion of the release.
The Armenian edition of Family of Shadows is now available at major bookstores in Yerevan and at Abril, Berj, and Sardarabad bookstores based in Los Angeles. All proceeds will be donated to Orran, a non-profit benevolent organization founded by Raffi and Armine Hovannisian, which supports needy children and elderly in Armenia.
The new edition is also available on Amazon. For more information, visit www.familyofshadows.com.
how can i purchase a copy of James Joyce “Ulysses” as trans;ated into Armenian?