Combining the historical urgency of The Burning Tigris, the cultural sweep of Middlesex, and the psychological complexity of Bending Toward the Sun, Garin K. Hovannisian's Family of Shadows is a searing history of Armenia, realized through the lives of three generations of a single family. In Family of Shadows, Hovannisian traces the arc of his family's changing relationship to its motherland, from his great-grandfather's flight to America after surviving the Armenian Genocide to his father Raffi Hovannisian's repatriation and subsequent climb to political prominence as the head of the Heritage Party. Hovannisian's articles on Armenian issues, including the Genocide, the Armenian Diaspora, and the challenges of post-Soviet statehood, have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Armenian Observer, Ararat, and numerous other publications.
Spanning a century of upheaval, this is the story of a nation told through the heart of one family.
- The Armenian Genocide: An unflinching, personal account of survival as Kaspar Gavroian, a boy from the village of Bazmashen, escapes the massacres that claimed his family and his homeland.
- Survival and Memory: Explore how the trauma of 1915 is passed down, shaping the lives of a scholar-son and politician-grandson who grapple with a history they never witnessed.
- The Armenian-American Dream: From the barbershops of Tulare, California, to the halls of UCLA, witness the family's journey to prominence in a new world while preserving the identity of the old.
- Repatriation and Return: A stunning conclusion as Raffi Hovannisian returns to a newly independent Armenia, becoming its first-ever minister of foreign affairs and closing a century-long circle.
Industry Reviews
"Garin Hovannisian brings a historian's rigor, a poet's lyricism, and a native son's passion to this remarkable book. Intimate as memoir yet expansive as an epic, Family of Shadows puts the Armenian experience, in all its tragedy and triumph, into memorably human terms."
