Skylark Farm
By Antonia Arslan
(Vintage, Paperback, 9781400095674, 288pp.)
Publication Date: March 18, 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover
Categories: Literary
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A beautiful, wrenching debut chronicling the life of a family struggling for survival during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, in 1915.
After forty years in Venice, Yerwant is planning a long-awaited reunion with his family at their homestead in the Anatolian hills of Turkey. But as joyful preparations begin, Italy enters the Great War and closes its borders. At the same time, in Turkey, the Young Turks, determined to rid their nation of minorities, force his family on a brutal march of hunger and humiliation. We follow Yerwant's relatives as they strain to stay alive and as four children set out on a daring course to reach Yerwant—and safety—in Italy.
A novel as lyrical and poignant as a fable.
Antonia Arslan has a degree in archaeology and was professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua. This is her first novel.
“Heartbreaking. . . . Powerfully unflinching. . . . Skylark Farm operates like [an Armenian] Schindler's List; it's a story of hope that makes it easier for us to confront the horror of what happens when evil is allowed to run unchecked.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“In Arslan's hands, the gruesome details of this tragedy are palliated by an old-fashioned story of redemption. . . . Skylark Farm is an affecting book.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Pertinent and provocative . . . It's Arslan's precise, vibrant description and sumptuous language that animate every facet of this world touched by death and terror. . . . A finely wrought elegy of her family's survival.” —Chicago Tribune
“A powerful account. . . . In the end, [survival tempers] the story with transforming heroism.” —Bloomberg
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