Mountains on Fire by Aram Yardumian
Mountains on Fire is a noir thriller grounded in the historical facts of the Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994). It is set in Nagorno-Karabakh itself as well as Yerevan, 1993-1994, as the war reaches its peak and dark times have descended. Two decorated war heroes, Gregory Yaloyan and Haik Nalbandyan, have been executed for high treason. The various accounts of their collusion with the enemy don’t add up to a journalist, who sets about reconstructing their final days by talking with dodgy characters who claim knowledge of the events. Yaloyan passed secret codes to the Azeris. Nalbandyan planted explosives in a children’s amusement park and shot up a church. But why? Or did the two soldiers become caught up in a conspiracy orchestrated by a mysterious man with a violin case? The future of the state of Armenia hangs in the balance.
Praise for the Book
“A spellbinding weave of intrigue, history, and culture, Mountains on Fire brings the rich and complex world of Armenia to life, illuminating how its troubled past throws long shadows into the present. With a vision both unflinching and compassionate, Yardumian writes of the war-torn territories not only of Armenia, but also of the human heart-places prone to chronic hauntings. Yardumian is a formidable storyteller whose keen and magical imagination and narrative energy blends the surreal and fabulist worlds of Gabriel García Márquez and Anton Chekhov’s sharp bursts of astonishing insight.” — Gina Oschner, award-winning author of The Necessary Grace to Fall and The Russian Dream Book of Color and Flight
“Mountains on Fire is a cultural landscape of Armenia’s conflicts and history, told through the sharp lens of mystery and exploration. Yardumian illuminates the nuances of Armenia’s complicated past in wars and strife, leading the reader through a haunting telling where truths are uncovered with humanity and understanding. This is not just a story, but a dark and beautiful tapestry, Yardumian’s language weaving the past with the present, bringing in characters with realism, yet an elusive charm. ‘It’s peace to where I go, I can feel it.'” — Aida Zilelian, award-winning author of All the Ways We Lied and The Legacy of Lost Things
“Armed with poetic prose, Aram Yardumian’s debut explores how war and its aftermath lingers, lurks, and haunts. Rooted in the Armenian experience, Yardumian gracefully gestures to universal complexities: that the unresolved is our only certainty, that the question is the answer.” — Raffi Joe Wartanian, inaugural poet laureate of Glendale, California, USA
Aram Yardumian is a field anthropologist who works in the Caucasus and the Caribbean. His other books include Listen (Errant Bodies, 2022), Persepolis (Bloomsbury, 2023), and The Peopling of the Caucasus (Cambridge UP, 2025).
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The opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author, and do not represent an official position of the International Armenian Literary Alliance.