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Raffi, The Golden
Rooster,
translated from Armenian by Donald Abcarian (London: Taderon Press, 2005), ISBN
1-90-3656-62-1,
paperback, GB£6.00/US$10.00.
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As two ruthless empires clashed under the
false banner of religion, the unsuspecting Armenian and Assyrian
peasants of Albak were caught in a holocaust of burning, looting and
massacre. Engulfed in the inescapable impact of these events, Raffi
set aside everything else to write his first historical novel,
Jalaleddin. With sparing but vivid strokes he fashioned a stark,
compact drama of epic proportions, forging a story that at once
crystallyzed the emotions of the Armenian public, showed them the
path to freedom, and set their fate squarely before them. But with
its call to self-defense and its frontal assault on the clerical
establishments of two major religions, Jalaleddin was not
appreciated by everyone. Immediately upon publication it set off a
firestorm of controversy and was bitterly attacked for its ideas in
the conservative Armenian press.
About the Author
Raffi (né Hakob Melik-Hakobian) was
born in 1835 in Bayajuk, near Salmas, in northwestern Persia. He
died in Tiflis in 1888. He was a prolific and popular writer who
contributed to Krikor Ardzrouni’s Tiflis-based liberal periodical,
Mshak (Cultivator). Among his other principal works of
fiction are Jalaleddin, Gharib Mshetsi (The exile from
Moush), Khachagoghi Hishatakarane (The diary of a
cross-stealer), Kaitzer (Sparks), Davit Bek, and
Samuel.
About the Translator
Donald Abcarian was born and raised
in Fresno, California, where his family was part of the extensive
Armenian-American community that has settled there since the turn of
the century. His earliest influences, including the Armenian
language, derived from that milieu. He graduated from the University
of California at Berkeley with a degree in philosophy, and has
pursued a lifelong interest in languages and world literature.
Having studied several European
languages over the years, Abcarian in 1996 took up the challenge of
learning to decipher the written language of his ancestors. This
translation is a result of that process. Click
here for an interview with Donald Abcarian.
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