Abstrakt
The paper analyses Varujan Vosganian’s The Book of Whispers, a polyphonic novel that consists of various personal stories, many of which describe the Armenian genocide and its aftermath. Recalling some of them, it shows the ways the narrative speaks up for the memory of the victims who perished in the massacres and death marches of 1915 and 1916. The last part of the paper focusses on the relationship between Vosganian’s novel and the album published along with its Romanian edition (Cartea Şoaptelor. Album), containing, among other things, photographs of the victims and their mass graves. The narrator’s sense of being chosen to preserve their stories, heard from elders since early childhood, makes it possible also to discuss the novel in terms of Marianne Hirsch’s concept of post-memory.Bibliografia
Vosganian Varujan, Księga szeptów, przeł. J. Kornaś-Warwas, Wrocław 2015.
Vosganian Varujan, Cartea Şoaptelor. Album, Ararat 2009, on-line: http://issuu.com/norghiank/docs/carteasoapteloralbum?e=1148580/5591434 [dostęp 28.06.2015].
Akçam Taner, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton 2012.
Bădulescu Dana, Varujan Vosganian’s Novel of Postmemory, „Word and Text. A Journal of Literary
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http://carteasoaptelor.ro/2015/05/24/gazeta-wyborcza- nterview-with-the-author-of-the-book-of-whispers-
similarities-with-bruno-schulz-prose/ [dostęp 18.06.2015].
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Teatralna” 2011, nr 105, s. 28–36.
Sala Dana, Memory as a Fathom of History. Cartea Şoaptelor (The Book of Whispers) by Varujan
Vosganian, „Analele Universităţii din Oradea. Fascicula Limba si Literatura Română” 2013,
nr 1, s. 53-66.