Cambridge to host talk on “Orhan’s Inheritance” Armenian Genocide novel

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian Genocide novel, “Orhan’s Inheritance”, by Aline Ohanesian has been chosen as Amazon’s Best Book of the Month for April 2015, listed alongside works by literary giants like Toni Morrison.

Orhan’s Inheritance has also been selected by the independent bookselling community as the #1 Indie Next pick for April and by Barnes & Noble for their Discover Great New Voices program for the summer of 2015. National media attention is forthcoming in the New York Times Book Review, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, National Public Radio, and much more.

Author Aline Ohanesian will be visiting Porter Square Books in Cambridge on May 14 on her national book tour. Co-sponsored by the Armenian Cultural Foundation (ACF) and Amaras Art Alliance, the event is free and open to the public, the Armenian Weekly reports.

Ohanesian was a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction founded by Barbara Kingsolver. A descendant of genocide survivors, she spent six years researching the novel, and even traveled to the region of the Ottoman Empire known as Sepastia to Armenians (and Sivas to Turks), where the story takes place.

When Orhan Turkoglu’s grandfather passes away, he returns to the village of Karod, Sivas, for the funeral, only to discover that his grandfather left the family home to a total stranger, Seda Melkonian, in a Los Angeles nursing home. Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that Seda so closely guards but will discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to forever change the way Orhan sees himself, his family, and his country.