Three Apples Fell from Heaven - Tapa dura

‘Marcom faces the well-nigh impossible task of speaking the unspeakable. She rises to this challenge...by writing a relatively short, intensely vivid, novel. The fierce beauty of her prose both confronts readers with many breathtaking cruelties and carries us past them...as we turn the pages of this dark and brilliant book, we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a noble act.’ New York Times Book Review

‘Such material presents a heavy burden for any writer. But Marcom is so talented that...she seems quite capable of carrying it. Her debut will stay with readers for a good long while.’ Chicago Tribune

‘Reading this heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel is a bit like reliving an extraordinarily long dream...This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded.’ Publishers Weekly

An extraordinary, powerful, moving novel of the lives of villagers during the tragic Armenian experiences in Turkey, told by the granddaughter of one of its victims.

In most of our minds, there is a faint memory of references to the Armenian massacres. During World War 1, the Turkish authorities – concerned about the large Orthodox Christian community in their midst – decided to remove that threat to their national survival: so the Armenians were removed, deported, killed, left to die, in their hundreds and thousands. An earlier example of ethnic cleansing.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom has woven the stories of her characters on their epic journey, using myth and Armenian fables, family diaries and her own imagination, to create an inescapable sense of the terror of a world torn apart, but also of the ultimate instinct for survival of the human spirit.