Black Dog of Fate - 10th Edition by Peter Balakian (Paperback)

About the Book

A prize-winning poet explores the Armenian past that haunted his family's American identity--dark secrets marked by the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the PEN/Albrand Award
A New York Times Notable Book

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a memoir of family secrets, survival, and growing up in the shadow of the Armenian genocide

"A fascinating and affecting memoir....Written with great sensitivity, Black Dog of Fate is at once a family memoir, a history of the extermination of the Armenians in Turkey, and the story of a young man's passage into adulthood."--New York Times Book Review

In this prize-winning classic memoir, New York Times-bestselling author Peter Balakian explores his suburban childhood and charts his slow uncovering of the truth of what happened to his family during the Armenian Genocide. In describing his awakening to the facts of history, Balakian introduces us to a remarkable family of matriarchs and merchants, physicians, a bishop, and his aunts, two well-known figures in the world of literature. The unforgettable central figure of the story is Balakian's grandmother, a survivor and widow of the Genocide who speaks in fragments of metaphor and myth as she cooks up Armenian delicacies, plays the stock market, and keeps track of the baseball stats of her beloved Yankees. The book is infused with the intense and often comic collision between this family's ancient Near Eastern traditions and the American pop culture of the '50s and '60s.

Balakian moves with ease from childhood memory, to history, to his ancestors' lives, to the story of his own coming of age. Written with power and grace, Black Dog of Fate is a tale of survival against enormous odds.

Review Quotes

"[One of the] best memoirs of the summer....Leaps from the babybooming suburbs of the '50s and '60s to the killing field of Armenia."--USA Today

"A deeply moving account of a modern American poet's discovery of genocide--that of his own people, the Armenians. Balakian's elegant style does not mask a burning anger over a holocaust the world has chosen to ignore."--D.M. Thomas, author of Dreaming in Bronze

"A fascinating and affecting memoir....Written with great sensitivity, Black Dog of Fate is at once a family memoir, a history of the extermination of the Armenians in Turkey, and the story of a young man's passage into adulthood."--New York Times Book Review

"A landmark chapter in the literature of witness.... It is one of the book's many triumphs that the incredible suffering endured by Balakian's ancestors...finds a redeeming correlative in the touching lyricism of his style.... Out of silence he has crafted something new."--Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review

"A prose masterpiece by an acclaimed poet.... Some memoirs are compelling for the private dramas they make public, others for the historic events to which they give witness and still others for the quality of their prose and structuring. Precious few excel at all three--Nabakov's Speak, Memory remains the standard. Now Balakian ups the ante a bit, writing a memoir that not only compels in all three areas but that carries within it an urgent and timely appeal that a dark moment in world history not be revised out of existence."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"All the best memoirs belong to the literature of quest. They are tales of discovery, stories of finding one's way back as well as forward. Balakian's Black Dog of Fate is such a book."--Houston Chronicle

"An engrossing and poignant memoir."--San Francisco Chronicle

"An essential American story of the author's upbringing as the child of Armenian immigrants--and of his gradual discovery of an entire culture's genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915.... A rare work of seasoned introspection, haunting beauty, and high moral seriousness. Includes a chilling genealogy of Balakian's parents' families."--Kirkus (starred)

"Balakian has written a sort of Armenian Roots.... He offers a picture of a suburbia with a secret.... In the retrieved testimony of [his ancestors] we can feel a stinging reproach that the 1919 promise of international law--to say nothing of international justice--remains unkept."--Christopher Hitchens, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Balakian weaves the dark horros of the Armenian past into his story of middle class America...a beautiful book....Balakian has given voice to a people who were nearly destroyed and told a story that all should read."--Fresno Bee

"Balakian writes with power and poignancy, confronting his past with justified outrage and transforming that outrange into art. An exceptional work."--Library Journal (starred review)

"Balakian, a gifted poet, knows exactly how to bring the pain of the past into the landscape of the present. Passionate and endearingly personal...an extraordinary book."--Alfred Kazin, author of A Walker in the City

"His book alternately amuses, charms, and horrifies...intimate, funny, sad, and very serious."--Providence Journal

"It starts as a graceful Holden Caulfield-like memoir of youth...and ends as...a cry from the heart, transcribed with enormous literary skill that directly penetrates the reader's emotions and uniquely conveys how and why the [Armenian Genocide] still grips the Armenian diaspora so ferociously."--Foreign Affairs

"Only once in a generation a work of literary accomplishment appears that poses the difficult questions so forcefully and succeeds in answering them with clarity and eloquence."--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"The eldest grandson of one survivor remembers. And it honors the memory of Nafina Aroosian that Peter Balakian tells her story and his with passion and with grace."--Orange County Register

"This is a profound and eloquent book that traces the transmutation of a painful history into the stuff of literature and moral engagement."--Mary Catherine Bateson, author of With a Daughter's Eye

"This will be a classic among memoirs for what it tells us about the Armenian-American story, about the reclaiming of unspeakable personal and family truths, and about the emergence of a powerful poetic voice."--Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctor

About the Author

Peter Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University. He is the author of several books, including Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection The Ozone Journal. Balakian's work has been translated into many languages, and he has appeared widely on national TV and radio. He lives in Hamilton, New York.