by Robert D. Lamson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2015
An affecting account of one man’s irrepressible will to survive and succeed.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
The fictionalization of a memoir that recounts an Armenian’s attempt to flee Turkey at the dawn of World War I.
Author Lamson (Beyond Guns and Butter, 1991) takes a remembrance written by his great uncle Souren Barkev Tashjian and expands it into a fuller, more novelistic account. This reconstructed version, bookended by Lamson’s own commentary, uses considerable “literary license,” transforming a skeletal account into something rich and cinematic. Unlike the original manuscript, which begins when Souren is 12, Lamson’s reworking commences before Souren was even born, with a prophecy that his life will be besieged with danger. That foretelling turns out to be spot-on; Souren is born into a Turkey in the midst of chaos. On the cusp of World War I, and hellbent on purging itself of its minority elements, Turkey has become an inhospitable place for Christian Armenians. Souren watches as his five siblings flee to the U.S. as he stays behind too long to safely exit and is called to register in the Turkish army or face dire consequences. In what follows, he exhibits almost superhuman resourcefulness and courage. Consistently trapped in impossible situations, he keeps divining creative ways to escape. His mother interprets one of his anxious dreams, anticipating his future daring: “You have experienced a premonition, as Armenians have been living alongside such a monster, now awakening. We will soon experience the full force of its ferocious nature, and for certain you are at great risk. But you, Souren, you are both smart and strategic. I believe this dream foretells that you will find a way to outsmart the monster and survive.” The journey that ensues is remarkable, even more so because it’s true and serves as a powerful reminder of the suffering Armenians went through as a result of Turkey’s modern transformation.
An affecting account of one man’s irrepressible will to survive and succeed.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503093201
Page Count: 348
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
Awards & Accolades
Likes
21
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
More by Ta-Nehisi Coates
BOOK REVIEW
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.