In the Ruins: book on Armenian massacres set for March 6 launch

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) has released the first complete English-language translation of the book “In the Ruins” by Istanbul author Zabel Yessayan, the Armenian Weekly reports.

The book, which has been translated by G.M. Goshgarian, will be officially launched on Sunday, March 6, at the Watertown Public Library, at an event celebrating International Women’s Day as well as Women’s History Month.

Participating in the program, which is open to the public, will be the book’s project director, Judy Saryan, her co-editors, Danila Jebejian Terpanjian and Joy Renjilian-Burgy, and AIWA’s archives director, Barbara Merguerian.

In June 1909, Yessayan journeyed to the scene of the 1909 massacres of Armenians in Adana as a member of the commission appointed by the Armenian patriarch to survey conditions and provide relief to the victims.

After spending three months in Adana province, Yessayan returned to Istanbul and wrote a series of articles summarizing her findings. These articles, which include extensive interviews with survivors chronicling the violence, death, and destruction that marked the massacres, were collected in her book “In the Ruins,” published in 1911.

The work is considered a masterpiece of literary testimony as well as an original source of crucial details about the Adana Massacres, which are often considered a prelude to the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Included in the publication are photographs as well as an appendix with selected articles and letters by Yessayan that provide additional insight into the events of the period.

The book, which has been translated by G.M. Goshgarian, will be officially launched on Sunday, March 6, at the Watertown Public Library, at an event celebrating International Women’s Day as well as Women’s History Month.

Participating in the program, which is open to the public, will be the book’s project director, Judy Saryan, her co-editors, Danila Jebejian Terpanjian and Joy Renjilian-Burgy, and AIWA’s archives director, Barbara Merguerian.

Zabel Yessayan (1878-1943) is remembered as a brilliant writer (of novels, short stories, and essays), a pioneering champion of women’s rights, and an active participant in the defining events in the Western Armenian community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rarely has the life of an individual writer so encapsulated that of her nation.

Born in Istanbul, Yessayan graduated from Surp Khach secondary school and at age 17 went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she began publishing fiction and non-fiction works in both French and Armenian. In 1908, now an established writer, she returned to Istanbul, where her hopes for a new liberal era were dashed by the 1909 Adana Massacres.

Continuing her literary career, Yessayan became the only woman on the “black list” of Armenian intellectuals to be arrested on the night of April 24, 1915. She managed to elude the police for three months, finally escaping to Bulgaria and on to the Caucasus. After engaging in relief work and publishing interviews with genocide survivors, she returned to Paris. In 1933, she moved to Yerevan, Armenia, where, five years later, she became a victim of Josef Stalin’s purges. She was arrested in 1937 and died in unknown circumstances, probably in 1943.