YEREVAN, APRIL 18, ARMENPRESS. "The Book of Mher's Door" by Armenian author Levon Khechoyan, of holy memory, again tops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency.

The Armenian novelist and short story writer, was born in 1955 in the village of Baralet in the Akhalkalack region of Georgia and since 1987 lived in the town of Hrazdan in the Kotayk province of Armenia.

In 1983 he graduated from the Armenian Pedagogical Institute receiving an M.A. in philology. Although he started writing as a teenager, his first works were not published until 1988 in local periodicals. His first collection of short stories, Trees of Incense, was published in 1991. Many of his short stories have been translated into Russian and Ukrainian. By 1994 his works periodically appeared in a Moscow-based literary weekly, “Literaturnaya Gazeta” and in literary magazines “Druzhba Narodov”, “Grani”, and “Lepta”.

"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez, who left this world aged 87, is on the second horizontal. The book was translated into Armenian from the Russian version by Hovhannes Ayvazyan in 2010. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is dedicated to the love affairs of an old journalist, who falls in love with a young girl.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate whose novels and short stories exposed tens of millions of readers to Latin America's passion, superstition, violence and inequality, died at home in Mexico City around midday, according to people close to his family.

Widely considered the most popular Spanish-language writer since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century, Garcia Marquez achieved literary celebrity that spawned comparisons to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.

His flamboyant and melancholy fictional works - among them "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," ''Love in the Time of Cholera" and "Autumn of the Patriarch" - outsold everything published in Spanish except the Bible. The epic 1967 novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude sold more than 50 million copies in more than 25 languages.

His stories made him literature's best-known practitioner of magical realism, the fictional blending of the everyday with fantastical elements such as a boy born with a pig's tail and a man trailed by a swarm of yellow butterflies.

''The Book of Lamentations'' by St. Gregory of Narek occupies the third position of the list. The mystical poem "Book of Lamentations" has been translated into many languages and has played a significant role in the development of the Armenian literary language. In 95 grace-filled prayers St. Gregory draws on the exquisite potential of the Classical Armenian language to translate the pure sighs of the broken and contrite heart into an offering of words pleasing to God. The result is an edifice of faith for the ages, unique in Christian literature for its rich imagery, its subtle theology, its Biblical erudition, and the sincere immediacy of its communication with God. This masterpiece by St. Gregory of Narek has always been included in our bestseller books list. 

"The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry occupies the fourth position of the "Bestseller Books List". The novella is both the most read and most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. The book was translated into more than 250 languages and dialects, as well as Braille.

Saint-Exupéry, a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and a reserve military pilot at the start of the Second World War, wrote and illustrated the manuscript while exiled in the United States after the Fall of France. He had travelled there on a personal mission to persuade its government to quickly enter the war against Nazi Germany. In the midst of personal upheavals and failing health he produced almost half of the writings he would be remembered for, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince fallen to Earth.

 “I from My Corner” by Vahram Sahakyan occupies the fifth position.

"Within and Without" by Herman Hesse occupies the sixth place. The story tells about a young man called Friedrich, who is described as a man who loves and respects rationality, especially logic and the sciences. In contrast, he has little respect for unscientific forms of knowledge. Though tolerant of religion, he does not take it seriously. He considers mysticism and magic to be pointless and outmoded in the scientific age. In fact, he despises superstition wherever he encounters it, especially among educated people. Those who question the supremacy of science in the wake of recent war and suffering infuriate him. He grows increasingly disturbed as he senses a rising interest in the occult as an alternative to science.

Then Friedrich spots a paper pinned to the wall, which awakens memories of his old friend’s habit of noting an interesting quotation. To Friedrich’s horror, however, the line written on this paper is an expression of Erwin’s recent mystical interests: “Nothing is outside, nothing is inside, for that which is outside is inside.”

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" occupies the next position of our list. This is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward, Lock and Company in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

"The Great Gatsby" by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald appeared in the 8th position. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.

First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly; in its first year, the book only sold 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940. His work, spearheaded by The Great Gatsby, experienced a revival during World War II, and the novel became a part of high school curriculum in the following decades. The book has remained popular since, leading to numerous stage and film adaptations. The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel". The book is consistently ranked among the greatest works of American literature.

"The Great Gatsby" is followed by "The Trial" by Franz Kafka. The Trial (original German title: Der Process, later Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 but not published until 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed to neither him nor the reader.

Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end. Because of this, there are some inconsistencies and discontinuities in narration within the novel, such as disparities in timing.

After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. In 1999, the book was listed in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and as No. 2 of the Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century.

"The Reader", novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink, which occupies the final position of the bestseller books list introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency. The Reader by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink was published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust.

Completed by Roza Grigoryan