Background
He was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1931.
(A Summer Without Dawn is an epic family saga that unfolds...)
A Summer Without Dawn is an epic family saga that unfolds against the true story of the Armenians deported from the Ottoman Empire and massacred during the First World War. In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders the deportation of the Armenians, the charismatic Armenian journalist Vartan Balian is separated from his family and imprisoned by politicians hoping to silence him. After a daring escape, he becomes a fugitive and embarks on an odyssey across the vast empire. Not only is he running for his life; he is also searching for his wife, Maro, and their young son, Tomas. Forced into one of the deportee convoys headed for the Syrian desert, their numbers thinning every day, Maro and Tomas are saved from certain death when the Ottoman governor overseeing their deportation shelters them in the cloistered splendour of his palace, where Maro is reluctantly drawn into his harem’s web of betrayals and alliances. In the four years that will pass before they are reunited, the Balians will each confront the calamities of war and the secrets of their own heart. With settings ranging from the exotic opulence of a Turkish harem and the cosmopolitan streets of Constantinople, to the blistering desolation of the Syrian desert, this sweeping novel immerses the reader in a time, a place, and a political moment that have rarely, if ever, been portrayed in the pages of a novel. A Summer Without Dawn is a rich tapestry of lives, a compelling human drama about a family swept up in one of history’s darkest moments, and a moving portrait of a people’s unbreakable will to survive.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/077103752X/?tag=2022091-20
(In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders t...)
In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders the deportation of the Armenians, journalist Vartan Balian, an Armenian, is imprisoned by politicians hoping to silence him. Soon, after a daring escape, he embarks on an odyssey across the vast empire in desperate search of his wife, Maro, and their young son Tomas, whose own stories we gradually learn. In the ensuing years the Balians will each confront the calamities of war as well as the secrets of the human heart. A Summer without Dawn is a compelling story about a family swept up in one of history s darkest moments, and a moving portrait of a people s unbreakable will to survive.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566568021/?tag=2022091-20
(Eastern Armenian translation. Engrossing and powerfully t...)
Eastern Armenian translation. Engrossing and powerfully told, this international bestselling novel is set against the Armenian massacres that occurred in the Ottoman Empire and during the First World War In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders the deportation of the Armenians, journalist Vartan Balian, an Armenian, is imprisoned by politicians hoping to silence him. Soon, after a daring escape, he embarks on an odyssey across the vast empire in desperate search of his wife, Maro, and their young son Tomas, whose own stories we gradually learn. In the ensuing years the Balians will each confront the calamities of war as well as the secrets of the human heart. A Summer without Dawn is a compelling story about a family swept up in one of history's darkest moments, and a moving portrait of a people's unbreakable will to survive.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9994145193/?tag=2022091-20
(For young Tomas, nothing in Istanbul is certain, except f...)
For young Tomas, nothing in Istanbul is certain, except for the lamppost that he touches every day for luck on his way to school. World War Two rages, the specter of the Armenian genocide haunts his parents and he is unsure of the affections of his neighbor Anya, the daughter of White Russian emigres. Anya and Tomas fall in love. Ten years on, Anya is in the United States studying medicine while Tomas tries to scrape together enough money to join her. He becomes the editor of a new literary magazine, and things seem to be going his way until one of his writers is brutally murdered, apparently because of a story Tomas has published. Can Tomas flee the country and rejoin Anya before getting caught up in the murder investigation?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566568552/?tag=2022091-20
(My Ethnic Quest delves into conflicts that stem from issu...)
My Ethnic Quest delves into conflicts that stem from issues of national identity, religious intolerance and social prejudice against Turkey s minorities. The book presents a mosaic of ethnicities: of Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Syriacs, Kurds, Yezidis and others. However, it also describes the silence imposed by the state to reduce the centuries-old mosaic into a drab mural. Much of this reflection has been sustained with unique personal narratives reflecting on a range of issues from everyday pressures on minorities to assimilate to such extraordinary episodes as discriminatory conscription into labour battalions (1941), confiscatory taxation with the imposition of the Capital Levy Tax (1942-43), anti-Jewish measures in Thrace (June-July 1934) and organized pogroms against Greek communities (September, 1955). It is against such a background that the author had to leave his native land for good.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1903656281/?tag=2022091-20
historian university professor writer
He was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1931.
He is the author of over 30 books on literature and linguistics, and eight novels, including A Summer Without Dawn, an international bestseller. He is known as the co-author of one of the most comprehensive anthologies of Armenian literature, The Heritage of Armenian Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Modern Times (Wayne State University Press, 2005). Hacikyan was born in Istanbul to Armenian parents.
After completing the first year of his engineering degree, Hacikyan left Turkey to study literature.
He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Montreal and has lived in Quebec since 1957.
(In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders t...)
(A Summer Without Dawn is an epic family saga that unfolds...)
(My Ethnic Quest delves into conflicts that stem from issu...)
(For young Tomas, nothing in Istanbul is certain, except f...)
(Eastern Armenian translation. Engrossing and powerfully t...)