LONDON/NEW YORK—I. B. Tauris, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, has announced the publication of Zabel Yessayan’s The Agony of a People: Haig Toroyan’s Eyewitness Account of the Armenian Genocide. The account, translated by Arakel Minassian (University of Michigan) and Dr. Tamar Boyadjian (Stanford University) and Dr. Maral Aktomakyan (independent scholar), is part of the series Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World edited by Bedross Der Matossian (University of Nebraska, Lincoln).
The book project was led by Jennifer Langley, the great-niece of Haig Toroyan, and co-edited by Tamar Boyadjian and Maral Aktomakyan. It features an article by Aktomakyan titled “Translating Hokevark or the Untranslatable Life-form: A Prefatory Attempt Among Prefaces,” a historical background by Prof. Elyse Semerdjian (Clark University) titled “Between the Lines: Haig Toroyan’s Testimony and the Armenian Genocide,” and an Afterword by renowned literary critic Prof. Marc Nichanian (independent scholar) titled “Testimony and Authorship: Zabel Yessayan’s The Agony of a People,” translated by Tamar Boyadjian.
Toroyan’s account of his journey from Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir in modern-day southeastern Turkey) along the Euphrates River to Mesopotamia and Iran is a unique and hauntingly detailed account of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Recounting the ominous final months of 1914, Toroyan is employed in Jarabalus by a sympathetic German Army Sergeant, Otto Oehlmann, as his assistant and interpreter, on a mission to transport arms to Iran. Posing as a Syrian Catholic Arab, Toroyan keeps notes on the atrocities he sees being committed against his own people but knows he cannot reveal his true ethnicity. He records the stories of the refugees he meets, as well as the conversations he can have with Turkish soldiers, unaware they are speaking with an Armenian. In summer 1916, Toroyan told his story to celebrated Armenian writer Zabel Yessayan, who had herself escaped from the round-up of intellectuals in Istanbul in April 1915. Yessayan published his testimony in 1917 in Western Armenian.
With this translation, Toroyan’s testimony, the first full-length eyewitness account of the Armenian Genocide ever published in Armenian in the wake of 1915, is available in English for the first time.
Langley remarked, “Publishing my great-uncle’s testimony in English, over 100 years after it was first published in Western Armenian, is a triumph. The Agony of a People is significant not only for our family but also for scholars of the Armenian Genocide. It also represents an important addition to the translated works of Zabel Yessayan, exploring the fine line between the historical and the literary.”
According to Boyadjian and Aktomakyan, Yessayan’s The Agony of a People, with her firsthand recording of Haig Toroyan’s experiences, stands as a unique and powerful historical account. They stated, “We approached the editing of this translation with a profound sense of responsibility and immense respect for her original work. Recognizing the delicate balance between preserving the authenticity of the testimony and ensuring its clarity for contemporary English readers, we undertook this task with deep dedication. It was a privilege to be part of a team that helped bring this vital work to a wider readership. We thank Jen Langley for entrusting us with this task.”
