I Ask You, Ladies and Gentlemen, Leon Z. Surmelian (softcover)

This memoir of Levon Surmelian (1906-1995), long time out of print, was praised by critics and reviewers at the time of its first edition in the United States and the United Kingdom (1945-1946). Now in a new edition by the Armenian Institute of London, it is enriched with a dozen of photos related to the book, “the literal truth about my boyhood,” Surmelian, a survivor of the genocide, wrote. As Susan Pattie writes in her preface, “in its charming presentation of the sense of adventure felt by a young boy with no real idea of the broad implication of his daily travails, it is certainly found in other homeless, displaced boys and girls through history in our world today. Thus, it is also a timeless and poignant narrative of survival and rebirth, of thriving while living with a hole at the center of one’s life. It is also a timeless reminder of the need to help these desperate children.”