The Novel that Reconstructs “the First Genocide of the 20th Century” Through a Bible

El Pais

Lean Left

Factuality

Ownership

The books in Armenia are “like a family member,” says Katerina Poladjan. So, when her parents were killed by the Turks, Anahid and Hrant only took an old Bible in their escape. With it in their arms, the minors fled the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Then, the “three” separated and did not see each other again. It was a century before the book—already smelling of wood dust, fungi and earth—came into the hands of a foreign restorer.