Book Club with Shahé Mankerian

“No one / tasted the difference between glass / shards and sugar beads / piercing the bloated belly / of brioches.”

Shahé Mankerian’s critically-acclaimed debut collection, History of Forgetfulness, takes readers to 1975 Beirut, where an un-civil war is brewing. Mankerian asks, “Who said war didn’t love / the children?” setting the tone for a darkly humorous collection in which memories of love, religion and childhood are entangled amongst street snipers and the confusion of misguided bombings. 

Ron Koertge writes, “Shahé Mankerian never leaves a reader un-engaged.” Poet Laureate Emerita Thelma Reyna writes, “A survivor of the Lebanese civil war in the late 20th century, Mankerian unspools in devastating simplicity and directness, in seemingly inconsequential scenes, the horrors and suffering of children, parents, neighbors, schoolmates, friends, lovers navigating daily bombardments, scavenging for food, dodging snipers’ bullets, and trying to find a modicum of normalcy among the ruins.”

Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School and the Director of Mentorship at the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). History of Forgetfulness has been a finalist at the Bibby First Book Competition, the Crab Orchard Poetry Open Competition, the Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award, and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.

Join the Armenian Institute and the International Armenian Literary Alliance on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 5 pm GMT / 12 pm EST / 9 am PST / 9 pm EVN for a reading and discussion with the author, led by Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian, a sociologist and an associate of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, specializing in Armenian and Middle Eastern Studies, with a particular focus on identity politics, religion and homeland-diaspora relations.

Order History of Forgetfulness directly from Fly on the Wall Press, or from Abril Books or Amazon.