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YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. "The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupérytops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency. 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 Book of Lamentations'' by St. Gregory of Narek occupies the second position of the list. As far as the pearl of the medieval Armenian literature, which is also known to the public as "Narek" for short, is much in demand in Armenia, "Zangak" printing house introduced the new publication of the book, which appeared in the first horizontal 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 Great Gatsby" by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald appeared in the third 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, which occupies the fourth place. 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 Castle" by Franz Kafka occupies the fifth position of the list. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village for unknown reasons. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with the Land Surveyor dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there". Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
"King Arshak,Eunuch Drastamat" by late Armenian author Levon Khechoyan occupies the sixth position. The Armenian novelist and short story writer, was born in 1955 in the village of Baralet in the Akhalkalack region of Georgia and since 1987lived 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”.
"Animal Farm" by George Orwell occupies the 7th position. Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel, published in Englandon 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to theRussian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, ademocratic socialist, was an outspoken critic of Joseph Stalin and, especially after experiences with the NKVD and the Spanish Civil War, he was actively opposed to the controversial ideology of Stalinism. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutaldictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin "un conte satirique contre Staline", and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".
The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, though the subtitle was dropped by U.S. publishers for its 1946 publication and subsequently all but one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime omitted it. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire. Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which recalled the French name of the Soviet Union,Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques, and which abbreviates to URSA, the Latinfor "bear", a symbol of Russia.
"The Old Man and the Sea" by the American author Ernest Hemingway occupies the 8th position. The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingwayin 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.
Written in 1951, and published in 1952, The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway's final work published during his lifetime. The book, dedicated to Hemingway's literary editor Maxwell Perkins, was featured in Life magazine on September 1, 1952, and five million copies of the magazine were sold in two days. The Old Man and the Sea also became a Book of the Month selection, and made Hemingway a celebrity. Published in book form on September 1, 1952, the first edition print run was 50,000 copies. The illustrated edition featured black and white illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe and Raymond Sheppard. The novel received the Pulitzer Prize in May, 1952, and was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. The success of The Old Man and the Sea made Hemingway an international celebrity. The Old Man and the Sea is taught at schools around the world and continues to earn foreign royalties
"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez is on the ninth 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.
And "The Plague" by Albert Camus occupies the final position of our list. The Plague (Fr. La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of medical workers finding solidarity in their labour as the Algerian city of Oran is swept by a plague. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.
The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large percentage of Oran's population in 1849 following French colonization, but the novel is placed in the 1940s. Oran and its environs were struck by disease multiple times before Camus published this novel. According to a research report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oran was decimated by the plague in 1556 and 1678, but outbreaks after European colonization, in 1921 (185 cases), 1931 (76 cases), and 1944 (95 cases), were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel.
The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, wherein individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings, the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition. Camus included a dim-witted character misreading The Trial as a mystery novel as an oblique homage. The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II.
Completed by Roza Grigoryan