A Houseful of Love is a novel by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, published in 1957 by Random House, that tells the story of an extended family of Armenian-Americans in 1929. It was a New York Times [1] and New York Herald Tribune [2] bestseller and was translated into several languages.
The unnamed narrator (like the author) was born in New York City as the daughter of Armenian refugees from Ottoman persecution, and like the author's father (Dr. Moses Housepian), the narrator's father was the primary physician to the Armenian community in New York at the time.
The family's story in New York in 1929 is told in parallel with that in the Ottoman Empire a generation earlier as well as with that of a cousin called Levon Dai. Although Levon Dai himself is absent from the direct action of the novel, family members often tell each other episodes from his life: how he fled Ottoman Turkey (whose government had assassinated his father), arrived in the US in 1919, and settled soon after in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he became a wealthy businessman; [3] [4] [5] however, his relatives still pity him because he lives in a place where he is the only Armenian.
A British edition was published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, and the book was translated into German (in an Austrian edition) as Ein Haus voll Liebe [6] and into Norwegian as Et hus fullt av kjærlighet. [7] Reader's Digest published abridged versions in English, Italian, German, and Japanese.
William Saroyan was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.
In Search of Lost Time, first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past, and sometimes referred to in French as La Recherche, is a novel in seven volumes by French author Marcel Proust. This early 20th-century work is his most prominent, known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory. The most famous example of this is the "episode of the madeleine", which occurs early in the first volume.
Christopher Darlington Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.
Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, he has sold over 13 million books in 63 languages, making him the country's best-selling writer.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1933 novel by Austrian-Bohemian writer Franz Werfel based on events that took place in 1915, during the second year of World War I and at the beginning of the Armenian genocide.
Henry Morgenthau was a German-born American lawyer and businessman, best known for his role as the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Morgenthau was one of the most prominent Americans who spoke about the Greek genocide and the Armenian genocide of which he stated, "I am firmly convinced that this is the greatest crime of the ages."
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a semi-autobiographical novella written by Dai Sijie, and published in 2000 in French and in English in 2001. A film based on his novel directed by Dai was released in 2002.
Ottoman Armenian casualties refers to the number of deaths of Ottoman Armenians between 1914 and 1923, during which the Armenian genocide occurred. Most estimates of related Armenian deaths between 1915 and 1918 range from 600,000 to 1.5 million.
Armenian literature, produced in the Armenian language, was mainly dedicated to national themes and has evolved distinct traditions in terms of style, imagery, and form.
The burning of Smyrna destroyed much of the port city of Smyrna in September 1922. Eyewitness reports state that the fire began on 13 September 1922 and lasted until it was largely extinguished on 22 September. It began four days after the Turkish military captured the city on 9 September, effectively ending the Greco-Turkish War, more than three years after the Greek landing of troops at Smyrna. Estimated Greek and Armenian deaths resulting from the fire range from 10,000 to 125,000.
Hakob Melik Hakobian, better known by his pen name Raffi, was an Armenian author and leading figure in 19th-century Armenian literature. He is considered one of the most influential and popular modern Armenian authors. His works, especially his historical novels, played an important role in the development of modern Armenian nationalism. Ara Baliozian described him as Armenia's "greatest novelist of the 19th century."
Agop Dilâçar was a Turkish-Armenian linguist who specialized in Turkic languages and head western languages specialist of the Turkish Language Association. He was proficient in 12 languages, including Armenian, Turkish, English, French, Greek, Spanish, Azerbaijani, Latin, German, Russian and Bulgarian.
Patriarch Torkom Manoogian was the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem serving the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He was the 96th in a succession of Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem, succeeding Patriarch Yeghishe Derderian (1960–1990).
Marjorie Anaïs Housepian Dobkin was an author and an English professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. Her books include the novel A Houseful of Love and the history Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City.
Levon Larents (Kirisciyan) (Armenian: Լեւոն Լարենց (Քիրիշճեան), 1875–1915) was an Armenian writer, translator, journalist, editor, novelist, poet, and teacher. He was an editor of many newspapers around the world and the founder of many others. During the Armenian genocide, Larents was deported to Ankara and then killed.
Yenovk Shahen was an ethnic Armenian actor and director who lived in the Ottoman Empire. He was killed during the Armenian genocide.
Graziella is an 1852 novel by the French author Alphonse de Lamartine. It tells of a young French man who falls for a fisherman's granddaughter – the eponymous Graziella – during a trip to Naples, Italy; they are separated when he must return to France, and she soon dies. Based on the author's experiences with a tobacco-leaf folder while in Naples in the early 1810s, Graziella was first written as a journal and intended to serve as commentary for Lamartine's poem "Le Premier Regret".
The Fool is an 1880 Armenian-language novel by the Armenian writer Raffi, one of the best-known novels by one of Armenia's greatest novelists. Set during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the plot tells a romance set against the background of the divided Armenian nation.
Moses Minas Housepian was a Syrian-born Armenian-American physician and humanitarian aid worker.