Bone Ash Sky

Bone Ash Sky is the sweeping story of an American journalist who goes home to unravel four generations of war and genocide, love and renewal, in Turkish Armenia and modern-day Lebanon.

When Anoush Pakradounian steps off a boat and feels Levantine heat on her cheek like a caress, she thinks she knows where she's going: she thinks she knows who's right and who's wrong.

Yet nothing about her family's past is black and white. In 1915 one million Armenians were marched into Syria by Turks and killed in the first genocide of the twentieth century. In 1982 Beirut came under siege for three months and 18,000 civilians died, while another 30,000 were wounded.

Anoush's quest for answers is interwoven with the memory of ruined cities and vanished empires: Lake Van before the genocide, Beirut in civil war, Ottoman villas and desecrated churches, Palestinian refugee camps and torture chambers turned into nightclubs. Her search to find out the truth about her father, her grandparents and her own place in the story spans four generations and massive upheavals in the Middle East.

About the Author

Born in 1973 of Greek and Irish/Australian parentage, Katerina co-founded Sappho Books and then the Gertrude and Alice cafe bookstore in Sydney. Her first novel, The Glass Heart, was published by HarperCollins in 2000 and reprinted in 2001, with Greek rights sold the same year. She began Bone Ash Sky with the aid of an Australia Council grant and a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland and travelled to Armenia, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria for research. In 2010, whilst researching for the book, she published an article in The Australian -'Turkey must lift veil on first Holocaust.'