Donald Rayfield

Ghosts of Anatolia

‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide

By

Princeton University Press 490pp £24.95 order from our bookshop

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide

By

Oxford University Press 298pp £20 order from our bookshop

Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia

By

I B Tauris 342pp £22.50 order from our bookshop

The extent of the Armenian genocide (at a sober estimate, half of the 1.5 million Armenians of Constantinople and Anatolia were slaughtered) carried out by Turks in 1915 was dwarfed by the Holocaust inflicted by the Nazis and their allies between 1941 and 1945, but the horror of the events and the festering political consequences are just as great. Yet recognition of the Armenian genocide is less widespread and more often denied than the extermination of Europe’s Jews. The literature alone is sparse and mostly academic: to date the most moving account is Franz Werfel’s fictional The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. However, the centenary of the genocide is being marked by three fine and very different studies. It is to be hoped that they will be published not only in English but in Turkish (Azeri and Ottoman) and Armenian too.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'To be clever without wanting to glory in it, put dimmer people down or make an act of covering it up (viz Boris Jo… ,
    • 'Her favourite design included a body in the shape of a horse, with a steam engine inside ... The passenger would t… ,
    • Sign up to our email newsletter below! Get free articles, highlights from the archive, and chances to win theatre… ,
    • RT : Founded in 1979, is a trusted independent source for reviews of new books across a variety of genres. A… ,
    • RT : Here we are - "Shelf Indulgence" by Ed Potten, a wonderful read, well worth your time: @Lit_Review,
    • 'Like going to a party hoping to get away as quickly as politeness allowed and at 4am finding myself still engrosse… ,
    • 'Neville never shed his sense of being the junior, and perhaps least-deserving Chamberlain.' From the archive, Mic… ,
    Follow Us