A richly detailed testimony to a young man’s courage in the face of unspeakable horror.
An account of tragic years in Armenian history.
In 1915, Haigaz (1900-1986), born Aram Chekenian, his mother and sisters became victims of Armenian persecution by Ottoman Turks, forced from their homes to march across the Syrian Desert. Starving and destitute, they came to a village where they discovered that other Armenian boys, after converting to Islam, found work as servants in Turkish households. Acceding to his mother’s pleas, the young Haigaz became a willing convert. For the next four years, he lived among Kurdish tribes, tending sheep, reaping crops, feeding chickens and serving as a trusted messenger. Living in intimate proximity to the families, he learned their customs, secrets and, with astute cunning, vulnerabilities. After immigrating to America when he was 21, Haigaz began to write and publish his memories of the massacre that killed his father and brothers, and he mined his experiences in short stories that were published in The Armenian Review. The author adapted some of those stories for a memoir, published in Armenian in 1972 and now translated, condensed and edited by his daughter. Haigaz tells a harrowing story of barbaric cruelty by Turks against the people they considered infidels. Nevertheless, after he converted to Islam—a simple matter of declaration—he was treated humanely. When his first master died, Haigaz moved to the household of his younger brother, a “sensible, modest, and godly” man who had not taken part in the Armenian massacres and, in fact, “could not kill a chicken or watch a sheep being slaughtered.” His only vice seemed to be a great love of alcohol, though forbidden by the Quran. Haigaz reveals intertribal struggles and betrayals as world war raged in the background. In the spring of 1919, with the Ottoman Empire defeated, he saw his chance to escape.
A richly detailed testimony to a young man’s courage in the face of unspeakable horror.Pub Date: March 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940210-06-3
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Maiden Lane Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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