YEREVAN, MARCH 7, ARMENPRESS. "The Book of Mher's Door" by Armenian author Levon Khechoyan, of holy memory, tops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency.

"King Arshak, Eunuch Drastamat" by the same author occupies the second 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 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”.

"The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry occupies the third 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.

''The Book of Lamentations'' by St. Gregory of Narek occupies the fourth 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 fifth 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 Castle" by Franz Kafka, which occupies the sixth place. 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.

"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" by Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez is on the seventh 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 Shagreen Skin" (La Peau de chagrin) by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac occupies the eighth position. Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.

Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles and story fragments in several Parisian journals. Although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication. A second edition, which included a series of twelve other "philosophical tales", was released one month later.

“Tzili-Sea: Book of Enchantment” by young Armenian poet Karen Antashyan occupies the ninth place this week’s "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency.

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell occupies the final position of our list. 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.

Completed by Roza Grigoryan