Chris Bohjalian believes USA will recognize Armenian Genocide

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 13, ARMENPRESS. American-Armenian novelist Chris Bohjalian’s next book will be a novel based on the earthquake in Gyumri and the events succeeding it. The author of The Sandcastle Girls bestseller who started his career as a journalist told “Armenpress” about his works, family, family memories about the Armenian Genocide.

Bohjalian’s The Guest Room is about two wonderful Armenian girls

I published two books after The Sandcastle Girls: The Light in the Ruins in 2013 and Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands in 2014. My new book will be published in January of 2016 where important scenes from Gyumri earthquake and the events succeeding it are described. It is called The Guest Room. The book is about 2 wonderful, beautiful and clever Armenian girls who had been taken by gangsters to Moscow then to New York and how their paths got intertwined in a New York family.

Memories of the Armenian Genocide

My grandparents, Levon and Haykuhi carried most of their stories to the grave. Only some shreds have remained. We know that Haykuhi’s father was killed, their farm was seized from them leaving her and her mother homeless. Three brothers of our great grandfather were in Cairo in 1915; all of them vanished. They seldom spoke about it.

I remember my grandfather when he was playing Armenian music together with their small Armenian band, when I was listening to “Krunk” or other Armenian music sitting on the floor of their house. When I think of my grandmother, I always recall her kitchen and а smile comes to my face at the idea.

Armenian cuisine is one of the ways of preserving the Armenian culture

From a journalist to a writer

I used to write novels before journalism. I was writing fantasy novels at the age of 8-9 when I was in high school and college. I started writing novels at the age of 20 and at that time also got interested in journalism.

USA will recognize the Armenian Genocide

There are two things that must happen. First off, Turkey must overcome its history the same way my country faced slavery and the slaughter of Native Americans becoming a better country in that way. Turkey must reach that point if it wants to have a world power. Germany could not have become a superstate hadn’t it recognized the Holocaust. I think that in the end the US President will turn to Turkey, saying: “I will not play political games with Turkey. I’ll do better like thePope and the Kardashians' did.”

Chris Bohjalian is an American novelist and the author of 15 novels, including the bestsellers Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls.

Chris Bohjalian graduated from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In the mid-1980s, he worked as an account representative for J. Walter Thompson, an ad agency, in New York. After a threatening incident in town, he moved with his wife to Lincoln, Vermont, in 1987.

In Lincoln, Bohjalian began writing weekly columns for local newspaper and magazine about living in the small town, which had a population of about 975 residents. The column has run in the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Bohjalian has also written for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, The New York Times, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.

Bohjalian's first novel, A Killing in the Real World, was released in 1988. His third novel, Past the Bleachers, was released in 1992 and was adapted to a Hallmark Channel television movie in 1995.

In 1998, Bohjalian wrote his fifth book, Midwives, a novel focusing on rural Vermont midwife Sibyl Danforth, who becomes embroiled in a legal battle after one of her patients died following an emergency Caesarean section. The novel was critically acclaimed and was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the October 1998 selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which helped push the book to great financial success. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. In 2001, the novel was adapted into a Lifetime Movie Network television film starring Sissy Spacek in the lead role. Spacek said the Danforth character appealed to her because "the heart of the story is my character's inner struggle with self-doubt, the solo road you travel when you have a secret".

Presented by Roza Grigoryan, Syune Barseghyan