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Novel Portrays Armenian Family In Nazi-Occupied Paris

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  • Novel Portrays Armenian Family In Nazi-Occupied Paris

    NOVEL PORTRAYS ARMENIAN FAMILY IN NAZI-OCCUPIED PARIS

    http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/12/06/novel-portrays-armenian-family-in-nazi-occupied-paris/
    ARTS | DECEMBER 6, 2012 10:09 AM

    All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    2013. 288 pp. $24. ISBN-978-0-547-93994-0

    By Daphne Abeel

    Special to the Mirror-Spectator

    Novelist Nancy Kricorian has chosen a somewhat unusual setting for
    her newest novel. Her story focuses on the plight of the Pegorian
    family and their Armenian community - all refugees from the Armenian
    Genocide - who have sought a better and safer life in Paris. But
    history and violence catch up with them again as they struggle to
    survive the Nazi invasion and occupation of France during World War II.

    Kricorian, a fluid writer, has researched the background for her story
    with great care and bases her plot on those Armenians who joined
    the French Communist Resistance, inspired by Missak Manouchian,
    an Armenian poet, who was ultimately killed with 22 members of his
    group by the Germans in 1944. To document her fiction, Kricorian
    traveled to Paris several times and interviewed Armenians who had
    lived through the Occupation. She was even able to contact one of
    the few surviving members of the Manouchian group.

    Her protagonist is a teenaged girl, Maral Pegorian, the daughter of a
    shoemaker, and his wife, Azniv, the latter struggling to contribute
    to the family income with her sewing. The rest of the household is
    composed of Maral's aunt, Shakeh, and Maral's somewhat older brother,
    Missak, who soon involves himself in Resistance activities with his
    activist friend, Zaven Kacherian.

    Kricorian vividly paints the circumstances of Paris at the time,
    especially the constant struggle to obtain food. The family exists
    to a large degree on a diet of turnips and rutabagas, supplemented
    occasionally by other vegetables or perhaps a chicken. The streets
    are flooded with German soldiers and officers who attempt to opportune
    Maral and her friends.

    An important strand in the novel's plot is the developing romance
    between Maral and Zaven, as he becomes more and more deeply involved
    in the activities of the Resistance. He and Maral's brother, Missak,
    take many risks, joining demonstrations, scribbling anti-Nazi graffiti
    on walls and distributing pamphlets.

    The Genocide surfaces, in some respects, by its absence. It is present
    in Maral's father's tight-lipped silence about the past and in her

    Aunt Shakeh's depression. Another strand of plot involves the help
    the Pegorians extend to a Jewish family, the Lipskis, who have a
    3-year-old daughter. When the Lipskis are swept up by the Nazis and
    sent to a concentration camp, the Pegorians manage to save the child
    and to smuggle her, with the help of Resistance members, out of Paris
    to live with an aunt in the country.

    An aspect of Armenia's involvement in the war is represented by the
    character of Andon Shirvanian, an Armenian, persuaded by General Dro
    to join the German army in order to escape death by starvation in
    a Soviet POW camp. Handsome and eager to connect with the Armenian
    community in Paris, he is drawn into Maral's circle with some
    surprising consequences.

    There are tragedies for both the Pegorian and Kacherian families.

    However, Kricorian skillfully weaves the strands of the story to
    downplay, to a large extent, the tragic circumstances that affect many
    of the characters. It must be said she never digs very deep, but she
    keeps the story moving in such a way that the reader cannot fail to
    be engrossed in spite of some clumsy deus ex machina plot twists.

    The real Missak Manouchian appears in these pages only peripherally
    and, basically, off stage. Instead, Kricorian has created two fictional
    Armenian families whose stories present a credible portrait of life
    for this immigrant Armenian community as it strives for survival in
    the midst of war and occupation.

    After graduation from Dartmouth College, Kricorian lived in Paris and
    subsequently earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University. She
    is the author of two previous novels, Zabelle and Dreams of Bread
    and Fire. She makes her home in New York.




    From: A. Papazian
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