Antonia Arslan

[gamavor]

Antonia Arslan

 

http://www.yerevan.ru/celebs/images/129.jpg

 

Antonia Arslan teaches Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature at Padua University. Her work includes: Dame, galline e regine. La scrittura femminile italiana fra 800 e 900 (Guerini e Associati, 1998) and Hushèr la memoria. Voci italiane di sopravvissuti armeni. La masseria delle allodole (The House of Larks) is her first novel. In this shocking book, she draws on her family’s memories to tell the tragedy of a “gentle and dreaming” people – the Armenians- and the heartbreaking nostalgia for a lost land and happiness. The larks’ farm is the house on the Anatolia hills, where in May 1915 the Turks started exterminating the Armenians, through the killing of the males, both adults and children, and women were atrociously forced to walk to Syria and confined in prison camps. Through death and desperation, those courageous women, thanks to their inexhaustible love for life, were able to keep the flame of hope burning. From Aleppo, after experiencing wicked events, three girls and a “a boy dressed up as a girl” sail for Italy where they will be met by Uncle Yerwant, the author’s grandfather, “guilty of surviving”, since he emigrated at a very young age. It is he who will guarantee a better future and cherish the dark memories that his granddaughter tells in a novel which is as sweet and harrowing as a fairy tale.