Top 16 Books About Armenia Updated 04 /2024

My favorite small country is Armenia. When I was in Armenia, I read a lot of books about the country's history to learn more about how it used to be.

These are seven of the best books I've read.

The Sandcastle Girls

The Sandcastle Girls is a love story that spans centuries and is based on Chris Bohjalian's Armenian roots.

Endicott has a diploma from Mount Holyoke and a quick course in nursing when she goes to Aleppo, Syria. She also doesn't speak much of the Armenian language. Boston-based Friends of Armenia has asked her to help deliver food and medical aid to people who fled the Armenian genocide in 1915. She has done this on their behalf.

Elizabeth becomes friends with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and baby daughter. Armen is a good friend to Elizabeth. He leaves Aleppo and travels south to Egypt, where he joins the British army. As he writes to Elizabeth, he comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the rich, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.

When we get to the present day, we meet a novelist named Laura Petrosian who lives in suburban New York. Laura hasn't given her Armenian heritage much thought, even though her grandparents lived in an ornate Pelham home that was called "The Ottoman Annex."

However, when a long-lost friend calls to say that she has seen a newspaper picture of Laura's grandmother advertising an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back in time to learn more about her family.

The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey

When a man stood up against genocide, this was an epic story about how he tried to tell his story. His granddaughter wants to do the same.

World War I is going on in the heart of the Ottoman Empire at the same time as Stepan Miskjian's world is thrown into chaos. He is separated from his family as they are all taken away by the government and sent to internment camps.

Gradually, he comes to understand that they are all going to die. He fights through hunger and thirst not to give up. During a forced desert march, Stepan manages to get away. He makes a dangerous six-day trek to the Euphrates River with only two cups of water and one gold coin.

Stepan wears disguises, outfoxes gendarmes, and, when he least expects it, meets strangers who show him the kindness of strangers.

The Hundred-Year Walk switches back and forth between Stepan's story and a journey that takes place a century later, after his family finds his long-lost journals and reads them.

First, Stepan's granddaughter Dawn MacKeen finds herself in the colorful bazaars before the war. Then, Stepan was forced to live through terrible things. She wants to follow in her grandfather's footsteps, so she sets off on her own to Turkey and Syria. She follows her resourceful, resilient grandfather through a landscape that is still tense.

The man she barely knew when she was a child now guides her through his journals. Family, home, and the human spirit can break down barriers of religion, ethnicity, and even time itself. Their shared story is proof that these things can't separate us from each other.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh

This heart-wrenching, poignant book is based on real events that made real people heroes. It tells the story of the Armenian people who were killed in 1915.

Europe is in the middle of a war called the Great War. In the ancient, mountainous lands southwest of the Caspian Sea, the Turks have started to kill their Christian subjects in a systematic way.

Thousands of Armenian villagers will follow Gabriel Bagradian to the top of Musa Dagh, "the mountain of Moses," in order to fight off death from his blood enemy. He was born an Armenian, was educated in Paris, married a Frenchwoman, and was an officer in the Ottoman army.

They will be under siege for 40 days by a Turkish army that wants to kill all the people there. They will be almost certain to die. This important book from the early 1930s is still the only significant book about the first genocide in the twentieth century, whether it's in fiction or nonfiction. It's also a powerful warning about the dangers of racism and scapegoating.

The Bastard of Istanbul

This book by Elif Shafak is set in both Turkey and the United States, and it shows how her country's violent history has shaped her life.

Asya, a nineteen-year-old who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, is at the heart of the book. Asya and the four sisters of the Kazanci family live together in an extended home in Istanbul. Zehila runs a tattoo parlour and is Asya's mother. Banu is a clairvoyant, Cevriye is a widowed high school teacher, and Feride is a hypochondriac who is afraid of bad things happening.

Their brother who hasn't seen them in a long time lives in Arizona with his wife and her daughter, Armanoush. To find out who she is, Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul and meets the Kazanci sisters. Asya is her best friend, and they become fast friends. A secret is found that connects the two families and connects them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres that took place in Turkey.

Black Dog of Fate

Peter Balakian was the first child born in his generation, and he grew up in a close, extended family in 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was surrounded by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a love for the New York Yankees that he shared with his grandmother.

But beneath this sunny world, there was the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had been through. In 1915, the Turkish government killed more than a million Armenians, including many of Balakian's relatives, in the century's first genocide.

In Black Dog of Fatecharts, Balakian grows as a person and learns about his family's history and the terrible consequences of the Turkish government's efforts to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against people.

Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan

Many people love food that is both fresh and tart. People in the Persian culinary region have many different religions, cultures, languages, and politics, but they all have a love for food that is both fresh and tart.

It adds color and sparkle to your food thanks to ripe red pomegranates, golden saffron threads, and the fresh herbs that come with every meal. A lot of the food you'll find in the Middle East is grilled meats, barbari breads, pilafs, and brightly-colored condiments. Ash soups, rose water pudding, and date-nut halvah are some of the sweets.

Naomi Duguid is our guide to this delicious world. For more than 20 years, she has been bringing us recipes and stories from places that seem out of reach.

People and places from around the world are featured in more than 125 recipes, accompanied by stories and photos. They show us a place where ancient legends and ruins meet new beginnings, where a rich history and culinary traditions make it an interesting place to read about for cooks and travelers, as well as anyone who wants to try food from a different culture.

The Spice Box Letters

Katerina gets a wooden spice box that smells good when her grandmother Mariam dies. It has letters and a diary that were written in Armenian.

She learns that Mariam's childhood was ruined by the Armenian tragedy of 1915 as she tries to piece together her family history.

When Mariam was sent away from her home in Turkey, she was cut off from her brother, Gabriel. Her life was filled with grief and the loss of her first love.

In order to finish Mariam's story, Katerina looks for answers in her own life. She goes on a trip across Cyprus and then to New York, where she meets a lot of new people.

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