All the Light There Was is the story of an Armenian family’s struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s—a lyrical, finely wrought tale of loyalty, love, and the many faces of resistance. On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris; like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, they have come to Paris to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well. But the children—Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friend Zaven—are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. Only when Zaven flees with his brother Barkev to avoid conscription does Maral realize that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured. After many fraught months, just one brother returns, changing the contours of Maral’s world completely. Like Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key and Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us, All the Light There Was is an unforgettable portrait of lives caught in the crosswinds of history.

All The Light There Was

Literature & Fiction

Kricorian, Nancy

United States

Mariner Books

A breathtaking novel that follows a young woman named Ani Silver through college, a long sojourn in Paris, and a string of romantic entanglements, all of which lead her to confront the legacy of her Armenian family's tragic past. At the book's opening, Ani is a bright, trusting young woman, passionately in love with Asa Willard: a New England boy with a trust fund as big as his appetites, and the farthest thing possible from the old world accents and superstitions that filled the childhood home she shared with her widowed mother and her Armenian grandparents. After college, she sets off for Paris in pursuit of education and adventure, safe in the belief that Asa is devoted and waiting for her to come home, where they'll marry and live a simple American life. But just as she is beginning to lose herself to the beauty and mystery of her new city, she receives a letter from Asa that shatters her dreams for the future. Newly unanchored, she confronts the puzzle of her individual and cultural identity for the first time, a puzzle that is enhanced and complicated by the resurfacing of a childhood friend, Van Ardavanian. Van is an elusive and beguiling character, an intense, single-minded young man whose preoccupation with the Armenian heritage they share verges on the obsessive. He shows Ani a whole new way of looking at the world, turns her eyes to a tragic heritage she has shut out, and opens doors to parts of her identity that she has never before acknowledged. But Van cannot deliver her to herself any more than Asa could, and through him Ani learns that passion and idealism can have dark consequences. Through a new constellation of friends and acquaintances in this foreign city, Ani comes to ask the questions about herself and the continuum she is a part of, and when Van disappears under dubious and mysterious circumstances, Ani returns home determined to puzzle out her past-- that of her father, David Silver, a Jew from NYC who was killed in a car accident when Ani was only five; that of David's family, who cut him and his new family off the moment he married Ani's Armenian mother; and finally, that of Ani's grandmother and grandfather whose gut-wrenching experiences during Armenian massacres at the hands of the Turks spill out once and for all, only at Ani's tentative prompting. Having learned the hard way that she cannot use other people as conduits through which to find herself, Ani ultimately comes to demand access to the rooms of her past that have been denied her. Infused with warmth and humor, Dreams of Bread and Fire is an irresistible novel that addresses a question that has faced every generation in this country: whether it is possible to achieve the neat simplicity of American life once we've arrived here without denying the haunting legacies of the places we've fled from.

Dreams of Bread and Fire

GROVE PRESS

Zabelle begins in a suburb of Boston with the quiet death of Zabelle Chahasbanian, an elderly widow and grandmother whose history remains vastly unknown to her family. But as the story shifts back in time to Zabelle’s childhood in the waning days of Ottoman Turkey, where she survives the 1915 Armenian genocide and near starvation in the Syrian desert, an unforgettable character begins to emerge. Zabelle’s journey encompasses years in an Istanbul orphanage, a fortuitous adoption by a rich Armenian family, and an arranged marriage to an Armenian grocer who brings her to America where the often comic interactions and battles she wages are forever colored by shadows from the long-lost world of her past.

Zabelle: A Novel

Charts the life of Zabelle Chahasbanian--her childhood in Ottoman Turkey, the Armenian genocide, her years in an Istanbul orphanage, the adoption by a rich Armenian family, an arranged marriage, and her eventual journey to America. A first novel. Tour.

Zabelle

Atlantic Monthly Pr

On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris, where, like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, her parents have come to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well―but Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friends Zaven and Barkev are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. When Zaven and Barkev flee to avoid conscription, Maral finally realizes that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured―and when only one brother returns after many fraught months, the contours of Maral’s world are changed irrevocably.

All the Light There Was: A Novel

She Writes Press

Writers from Alice Walker to Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on one of the most vital gatherings of writers and readers in the world.
The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power."
 Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations.
 Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Miéville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman.

This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature

Biographies & Memoirs

Holmes, Rachel

SHAMSIE, Kamila

DYER, Geoff

Achebe, Chinua

Crabapple, Molly

Brittain, Victoria

SPALDING, Linda

Mishra, Pankaj

PALIN, Michael

Darwish, Mahmoud

ONDAATJE, Michael

Hanif, Mohammed

Horner, John

Hammad, Suheir

Foulds, Adam

Mahfouz, Sabrina

Karmi, Ghada

SLOVO, Gillian

COLE, Teju

Abulhawa, Susan

Pavlić, Ed

Kanazi, Remi

Freeman, Ru

Mahjoub, Jamal

Handal, Nathalie

Darwish, Najwan

Harding, Jeremy

Saif, Atef Abu

Kemp, Mercedes

El-Rifae, Yasmin

Keenan, Bridget

Dabbagh, Selma

Bseiso, Jehan

El-Khairy, Omar

Musleh, Maath

Muiz

COETZEE,J.M.

Shehadeh, Raja.

SUTCLIFFE, WILLIAM

Amiry, Suad.

WALKER,Alice

MANKELL, HENNING

MOGGACH, Deborah

Mieville,China

MESSUD, Claire

Historical

Bloomsbury USA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kricorian, Nancy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kricorian, Nancy