"Armenpress" introduces bestseller books list 2/28
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez tops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency. 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.
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez OCCUPIES @ND POSITION. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia.
The widely acclaimed book, considered by many to be the author's masterpiece, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and subsequently has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has sold more than 30 million copies. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, which wasstylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American) and the Cuban Vanguardia (Vanguard) literary movement. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
"The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry occupies the third place. 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.
"Love in the Time of Cholera" again by Márquez occupies the fourth position. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
“Once upon a Time There was Parajanov” by Garry Kuntsev occupies the fifth position. Sergei Parajanov was Soviet Armenian film director and artist who made significant contributions to Ukrainian, Armenian and Georgian cinema. He invented his own cinematic style, which was totally out of step with the guiding principles of socialist realism (the only sanctioned art style in the USSR). This, combined with his controversial lifestyle and behaviour, led Soviet authorities to repeatedly persecute and imprison him, and suppress his films.
Although he started professional film-making in 1954, Parajanov later disowned all the films he made before 1964 as "garbage". After directing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (renamed Wild Horses of Fire for most foreign distributions) Parajanov became something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system. Still, it required the help of influential Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze and other friends to have his last feature films greenlighted. His health seriously weakened by four years in labor camps and nine months in prison in Tbilisi, Parajanov died of lung cancer in 1990, at a time when, after almost 20 years of suppression, his films were being featured at foreign film festivals. "Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I'm going to die in Armenia." - Sergei Parajanov, 1988.
"Charents-Name" by Gourgen Mahari has been included in our list. One cannot find any other two names, which will be so closely tied with each other spiritually and personally, as Yeghishe Charents and Gourgen Mahari. Charents was one of the most outstanding poets of the twentieth century, touching upon a multitude of topics that ranged from his experiences in the First World War, socialism, and, more prominently, on Armenia and Armenians. His works were translated by Valeri Bryusov, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Louis Aragon and others. His famous poems are: Three songs to the sad and pale girl...", poems (1914), "Blue-eyed Homeland", poem (1915), "Soma", poem (1918), "Charents-Name", poem (1922), "Country of Nairi" (Yerkir Nairi) (1926), "Epical Sunrise", poems (1930), "Book of the Way", poems (1933-34), and many others.
And "The Picture of Dorian Gray" occupies the seventh 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 eighth 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.
"Let Me Whisper It in Your Ear" inclosing poems by prominent Armenian author Paruyr Sevak has been included in the "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency for the first time. It occupies the nineth position. Sevak was born Paruyr Ghazaryan in Chanakhchi (now Zangakatun) village, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union to Rafael and Anahit Soghomonyan on January 24, 1924. Young Paruyr attended the village school and later in 1940 moved to Yerevan to study at the philological faculty of Yerevan State University. He graduated from the YSU in 1945. The same year he starts a postgraduate study of Armenian literature at the Academy of Sciences Abeghyan Institute of Literature. In 1951 Sevak went to Moscow to study at the Gorky Institute of World Literature. Graduating from that institute Sevak works there in 1957-59 as a translating professor.
In 1960 Sevak returns to Yerevan and starts his fecund and meaningful literary, scientific and public activism.[2] He starts to work at the Abeghyan Institute of Literature as a scientific researcher. From 1966-1971 Sevak served as the Secretary of the Board of the Writers Union of Armenia.
In 1967 Sevak became a doctor of philology after dissertation defense. In 1968 he was elected to the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR.
Sevak died on June 17, 1971 in a car crash while on a drive back to Yerevan. In previous years, he had voiced his criticism of the corruption of the Soviet establishment and for this, many Armenians believe, he was murdered by the Soviet government. His wife, Nelly Menagharishvili, also died in the car crash. He was buried in the backyard of his home, in Zangakatun, which later became a museum.
And “Perfume” by German writer Patrick Süskind occupies the final position of the Bestseller Books List introduced by “Armenpress” News Agency. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meaning that scents may carry. Above all it is a story of identity, communication and the morality of the human spirit. The novel was translated into English by John E. Woods and won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987.
The story focuses on Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a perfume apprentice in 18th-century France who, born with no body scent himself, begins to stalk and murder virgins in search of the "perfect scent", which he finds in a young woman named Laure, whom his acute sense of smell finds in a secluded private garden in Grasse.
Some editions of Perfume, including the first, have as their cover image Antoine Watteau's painting Jupiter and Antiope, which depicts a sleeping woman.
Completed by Roza Grigoryan