Overview

Set in an Armenian mountain village immediately after the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, these thirty-one linked short stories trace the interconnected lives of villagers tending to their everyday tasks, engaging in quotidian squabbles, and celebrating small joys against a breathtaking landscape. Yet the setting, suspended in time and space, belies unspeakable tragedy: every character contends with an unbearable burden of loss. The war rages largely off the book’s pages, appearing only in fragmented flashbacks. Abgaryan’s stories focus on how, in the war’s aftermath, the survivors work, as individuals and as a community, to find a way forward. Written in Abgaryan’s signature style that weaves elements of Armenian folk tradition into her prose, these stories of community, courage, and resilience celebrate human life, where humor and love and hope prevail in unthinkable circumstances.

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9781636081526

Table of Contents

Reviews

“One of Europe’s most exciting authors” – The Guardian Acclaim for Narine Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell from the Sky “I loved this! A tender and quirky tale of stoicism, resilience and love... The ultimate feel-good story of an unlikely romance and the warmth of a community, drawn with humor, empathy, and an earthy, magical charm.” ― Mary Chamberlain, author of The Hidden “Read this book. It’s balm for the soul.” ― Ludmila Ulitskaya, author of The Big Green Tent “Suffused with kindness, humor, subtlety, and understated finesse.” ― Eugene Vodolazkin, author of Laurus  “A charming novel... [It] teems with minor characters whose quirks are at times amusing and at times heartbreaking... A warm-hearted story about family, friendship, and community.” ― Foreword Reviews “A poignant, bittersweet, fable-like story. ... The strongest message that shines through this finely translated novel is that resignation need not lead to cynicism.” ― Asian Review of Books “With finely phrased descriptions of daily activities and homes with ‘chimneys that clung to the hem of the sky,’ and indelible details of complex, humble characters, this magical tale transcends familiar mystical tropes with its fresh reimagining of Armenian folklore.” ― Publishers Weekly “Charming… A celebration of community with a supernatural dimension that gives it the air of a fable, it's a compassionate, heartwarming novel.” – The Herald (Glagow)

One of Europe’s most exciting authors. —The Guardian In this vivid and harrowing linked collection, Abgaryan depicts rural life in the war-ravaged borderlands between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The villagers in close-knit Berd, an Armenian mountain community, carry on despite unbearable losses. The author was born and raised in Berd, and the stories are starkly realistic and often shocking in their portrayals of sudden violence, making their moments of joy all the more remarkable. These memorable tales evoke the power of the human spirit. —Publishers Weekly Narine Abgaryan is an Armenian who writes in Russian and lives in Germany. As her Russian reader and admirer, I will say that in our literature she is one of a kind: she is absolutely at home and actually occupies one of the most venerable rooms. This book is about Armenia, a country that has seen much suffering. Yet despite describing tragic and at times terrifying events, To Go On Living contains neither desperation nor bitterness. It contains only grief, love, and hope. —Eugene Vodalazkin, author of Laurus I was blown away by these stories of war told through the lives of ordinary folk in a small rural community. Understated and exquisite, full of compassion and humanity, humor and hope, they enrich us with their tender portrayal of resilience in the face of brutality and tragedy. Narine Abgaryan is a writer of genius. —Mary Chamberlain, author of The Dressmaker’s War Narine Abgaryan’s stories describe universal pain of war that transcends boundaries and ethnicities. As an Azerbaijani, I appreciated these narratives of Armenians who lived through war between Azerbaijan and Armenia and carry its scars. The author shows how wounds of war linger from generation to generation. The everyday realities of traumatized people who have to live with memories of war and loss come alive in these pages and remind us that suffering, like love and mercy, is above politics and can be a uniting force between former enemies. —Agshin Jafarov, Azerbaijani novelist

Author Information

Narine Abgaryan was born in 1971 in Berd, Armenia, to a doctor and a school teacher. Named one of Europe’s most exciting authors by the Guardian, she is the author of a dozen books, which have collectively sold over 1.35 million copies. Her book Three Apples Fell from the Sky won the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award and an English PEN Award, and has been translated into 27 languages. Her award-winning trilogy about Manunia, a busy and troublesome 11-year-old, has been made into a TV series. Abgaryan divides her time between Armenia and Germany. Margarit Ordukhanyan, PhD, is a New York-based scholar and translator of poetry and prose from her native Armenian and Russian into English. Ordukhanyan was the Fall 2022 Translator-in-Residence at the University of Iowa’s Translation Workshop and a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellow. She is currently a fellow at the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities at the New York Public Library. Zara Martirosova Torlone, a native of Armenia, is a professor in the classics department at Miami University, Ohio. She received her BA in classical philology from Moscow University and her PhD in classics from Columbia University. She is the author of Russia and the Classics: Poetry’s Foreign Muse (Duckworth, 2009), Latin Love Poetry (Bloomsbury, co-authored, 2014), and Vergil in Russia: National Identity and Classical Reception (Oxford University Press, 2015), and co-edited A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and Virgil and His Translators (Oxford University Press, 2018).

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