ARLINGTON, Mass. — Armenian Genocide novel, Orhan’s Inheritance, by Aline Ohanesian has been chosen as Amazon’s Best Book of the Month for April 2015, listed alongside literary giants like Toni Morrison. The book has also been selected by the independent bookselling community as the #1 Indie Next pick for April and by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Voices program for Summer of 2015. Algonquin Books is thrilled by the reception for this debut novel, and especially at how an Armenian Genocide novel will be front and center in every bookstore in the county. National media attention is forthcoming in the New York Times Book Review, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, National Public Radio, and much more.
Ohanesian will visit Porter Square Books, in Cambridge on May 14 at 7 p.m. on her national book tour. Co-sponsored by the Armenian Cultural Foundation and Amaras Art Alliance, the event is free and open to the public.
Ohanesian was a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction founded by Barbara Kingsolver. A descendant of Genocide survivors, she spent six years researching the novel, and even traveled to the region of the Ottoman Empire, known as Sepastia to Armenians and Sivas to Turks, where the story takes place.
Not only is Orhan’s Inheritance a profoundly moving and beautiful story, but it also gives voice to millions of silent victims and a forgotten part of history. When Orhan Turkoglu’s grandfather passes away, he returns to the village of Karod, Sivas for the funeral, only to discover that his grandfather left the family home to a total stranger, Seda Melkonian, in a Los Angeles nursing home. Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that Seda so closely guards but discovers that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to forever change the way Orhan sees himself, his family and his country. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.
The book is published by Algonquin Books, a branch of Workman Publishing.
