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YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 15, ARMENPRESS. New samples of fine literature appeared in this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency.
The book of poems titled “Life Story: A Draft” by contemporary Armenian author Avag Yepremyan tope tops this week's list. The book was published by “Antares” Publishing House.
"Where the Wild Roses Bloom" by Moscow-resident contemporary Armenian author Mark Aren (Karen Martirosyan) has appeared in the second position of this week’s bestseller books list.
"The Alchemist" novel by contemporary Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is in the third position of the "Bestseller Books List". This book has been translated into 67 languages and according to AFP, it has sold more than 30 million copies in 56 different languages, becoming one of the best-selling books in history and winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.
"The Reader", novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink, which occupies the fourth 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.
"Eleven Minutes" by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho occupies the fifth position. The novel is based on the experiences of a young Brazilian prostitute called Maria, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer...." When a chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working as a prostitute.
"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez is on the sixth 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.
"The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry occupies the seventh position. 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.
"The Autumn of the Patriarch" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez have been enclosed in one book, which occupies the eighth position of the ranking list. A "poem on the solitude of power" according to the author, the novel is a flowing tract on the life of an eternal dictator. The book is divided into six sections, each retelling the same story of the infinite power held by the archetypical Caribbean tyrant. García Márquez based his fictional dictator on a variety of real-life autocrats, including Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of his Colombian homeland, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain (the novel was written in Barcelona), and Venezuela's Juan Vicente Gómez. The product is a universal story of the disastrous effects created by the concentration of power into a single man.
The next is "Bastard of Istanbul" by Elif Şafak. The book is dedicated to various problems the modern Turkey has to face with. The author pays a lot of attention to the issue of the Armenian Genocide, which has become an insuperable complex in the psychology of the Turks. Elif Şafak's books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. Elif Şafak is an established and outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. "As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Şafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas..." Critics have named her as "one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature"
And “Enoch’s Eye” by contemporary Armenian writer Gurgen Khanjyan occupies the final position of the this week’s "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency.