Passage to Ararat, Michael J. Arlen (softcover)

At the age of twenty-one, a young writer named Dikran Kouyoumjian changed his name to Michael Arlen, repudiating his Armenian heritage and going on to become a moderately successful author of British society novels in the 1920s.

Some five decades later his son, New York journalist Michael J. Arlen, embarked on a journey to rediscover the ethnic ties that his father had effectively severed; Passage to Ararat is the classic, award-winning tale of Arlen’s search for identity, personal history, and a connection to a rich and troubled culture he knew almost nothing about.

Along the way, Arlen deftly weaves his own stories of traveling in the Middle East with the greater sweep of Armenian history—a history colored by persecution and haunted by memories of the genocide. For Arlen, a product of the Anglo-American middle class, coming to terms with such traumatic roots is not easy, but as he explores the meaning of “being Armenian,” he also begins to understand the complicated forces that drove his father—and himself.