The Bois de Vincennes, Nigoghos Sarafian (softcover)

Nigoghos Sarafian (1902-1972) was part of a great generation of writers, known as the Menk (We) group, who lived in Paris but wrote and communicated in Armenian. The Bois of Vincennes is a personification of a park that tells of an entire people, as well as a depiction of love, frustration, war, sometimes antiquated views of women, philosophical musings—it is a complex attempt to understand the remarkable and tragic history of Armenians in the twentieth century, a book where trees become murderers and saints, and where world history and personal history become one.

In his introduction, Marc Nichanian writes: “The Bois de Vincennes is many things simultaneously: a meditation by an exiled poet on his unique destiny and on the equally unique destiny of his people; a reflection on the West, and an attempt to integrate the notion of exile into language itself. First and foremost, however, it is one of the most beautiful twentieth-century texts written in the Armenian language.”