{"product_id":"skylark-farm-isbn-9781400095674","title":"Skylark Farm","description":"A beautiful, wrenching debut chronicling the life of a family struggling for survival during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, in 1915.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter forty years in Venice, Yerwant is planning a long-awaited reunion with his family at their homestead in the Anatolian hills of Turkey. But as joyful preparations begin, Italy enters the Great War and closes its borders. At the same time, in Turkey, the Young Turks, determined to rid their nation of minorities, force his family on a brutal march of hunger and humiliation. We follow Yerwant's relatives as they strain to stay alive and as four children set out on a daring course to reach Yerwant—and safety—in Italy. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA novel as lyrical and poignant as a fable.“Heartbreaking. . . . Powerfully unflinching. . . . \u003ci\u003eSkylark Farm\u003c\/i\u003e operates like [an Armenian] \u003ci\u003eSchindler's List\u003c\/i\u003e; it's a story of hope that makes it easier for us to confront the horror of what happens when evil is allowed to run unchecked.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e“In Arslan's hands, the gruesome details of this tragedy are palliated by an old-fashioned story of redemption. . . . \u003ci\u003eSkylark Farm\u003c\/i\u003e is an affecting book.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“Pertinent and provocative . . . It's Arslan's precise, vibrant description and sumptuous language that animate every facet of this world touched by death and terror. . . . A finely wrought elegy of her family's survival.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e“A powerful account. . . . In the end, [survival tempers] the story with transforming heroism.” —\u003ci\u003eBloomberg \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAntonia Arslan\u003c\/b\u003e has a degree in archaeology and was professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Padua. This is her first novel.\u003cb\u003eFIRST PARTUncle Sempad\u003c\/b\u003e      Uncle Sempad is only a legend, for us—but a legend that has made us all  cry. He was my grandfather’s younger brother, his only uterine brother;  their mother, Iskuhi, the little princess, died at nineteen giving birth  to him. My great-grandfather then remarried an “evil stepmother,” who bore  him many other children; my grandfather couldn’t stand her, and so, at the  age of thirteen, he requested and was granted permission to leave the  little city and go to Venice, to study at Moorat-Raphael, the boarding  school for Armenian children.But Uncle Sempad was much sweeter and more easygoing than his brother, and  he loved his little city, his lazy, sleepy province, the café chats with  his friends, the fierce games of backgammon, the hunting. He went off to  Constantinople to become a pharmacist, but always knew he would return  home. At the university, he read the papers, joined a political party,  dreamed like others of the rebirth of the ancient Armenian homeland,  kicked up   his heels a little, and kidded himself. Back home, he made his peace with  the stepmother, amused himself by coddling his little brothers and pulling  his sisters’ braids, and began to think of marriage.Every so often he went riding, with a friend from the Laz country.  Together they felt like crusaders and knights, imagined heading off to  battle in the direction of the sun, like Alexander, free men with swords  at their sides. Goodbye to exhausting negotiations for every permission,  to imperial bureaucracy, to the necessarily servile deference of the  Armenian, of the merchant, of those who make requests that are easily  denied and have no weapon but the vassal’s tricks. And yet: to be riding  toward the East, the conquered, but to be men of the West, the conquering.   To speak French, to subscribe to the \u003ci\u003eRevue des deux mondes\u003c\/i\u003e, to visit Paris  . . .They often spoke of Paris, or of Italy, a friendly country, where Yerwant  was making his fortune. But Sempad had no desire, his promises  notwithstanding, to go visit his brother: he was timid and Eastern. If  only his brother would come home, if only he would bring his Frankish*  wife with him, and their children Yetwart and Khayël, and introduce them  to their family. He had left with honor, and with honor he would be  welcomed back. But in his heart of hearts, Sempad feared that this would  never happen; Yerwant had gone away for good, and his sons—despite their  names—did not speak the ancestral language and had been educated in German or Italian schools. Anatolia, for  them, was a far-off fairy tale.“Perhaps,” thought Sempad, “one of my sons will find his way to Yerwant,  and perhaps we will all trade this place, a few at a time, for places  where we’ll no longer   be afraid.” But he didn’t really want that. Many were leaving, it was  true. From the most dangerous regions, the boldest youths, the brightest,  the most intrepid, those who couldn’t bear the strict confines of the  Ermeni Millet—the Armenian administrative unit—within the Empire, were  flowing out in a continuous stream.For Europe, for the coveted culture: to become   doctors, dentists, architects, poets—or for America, to become utterly  new, to forget. His half brother, Rupen, lived in Boston and was quite  content. But Sempad, in his simple heart, understood Rupen’s solitude and  sent him a fine wooden backgammon set, with a decidedly affectionate  inscription engraved all around it in Armenian characters, the same set he  had at home. He never would have imagined that that set—relic or icon from  a terrible shipwreck—would for two of his children be the only sign, aside  from a solemn ceremonial photograph, of their father’s lively existence.Sempad loved his pharmacy. He was a slow-moving man, not particularly  witty, and profoundly good. As a boy he protected his younger sisters,  Veron and Azniv, from their tumultuous, harassing brothers, Rupen and  Zareh. And he loved to send telegrams.“The pharmacist,” he used to say, “ought to be equipped to send and  receive telegrams. There could be an \u003ci\u003eurgency\u003c\/i\u003e.”Everyone teased Sempad, both at home and at the pharmacy, for the  elaborate way the word urgency rolled off his tongue. How it resounded in  his mouth, that Westernism: symptom of progress, symbol of haste, of the  shaking off of Eastern indolence.“People,” he used to say, “are not going to put off death so that we can  finish our card game. We intellec-  tual Armenians need to set an example, of precision, of modernity, of  punctuality: for both the average Armenian and the average Turk. Why else  did we bother studying?”But he himself no longer studied anything; he observed the holidays and  stroked his mustache—counting his seven children. He barely glanced at the  paper with   the news from Constantinople, though he was proud that the Armenians up  there were beginning to gain respect; some had even become delegates, and  Krikor Zohrab, poet and delegate, played \u003ci\u003etavli\u003c\/i\u003e—the Turkish version of  backgammon—with the supremely powerful minister of the interior, Talat  Pasha.Zohrab’s \u003ci\u003etavli\u003c\/i\u003e! His friendship with Talat had become, for the gentle,  daydreaming Armenian people, an omen of good fortune, a symbol of the new  day of prosperity and progress that was about to dawn with the political  collaboration between the Young Turks and the Armenian millet. A powerful,  disarming symbol: “He goes to his home, he’s received like family, they  drink tea together.” For Sempad, and all the others like him, it was  literally inconceivable that a man could deceive—much less kill—someone  with whom he drank tea \u003ci\u003ein his own home\u003c\/i\u003e: a guest!For Sempad and those like him, worldliness included neither duplicity or  deception; it was grounded, rather, in the application of a careful  mercantile etiquette of earnings, profits, and losses, calculated  generously and with due respect to the community’s poor. And moreover, the  pharmacist had a moral code to uphold. He was practically a doctor and  practically a man of letters: the guardian of health, the keeper of  poisons, the bearer of newspapers, the telegram man—a pillar of the  community.Everyone knew that Shushanig, his boisterous and fertile wife, though she  professed to have nothing to do with her husband’s affairs, happily  controlled him down to his last whisker, as the proverb says. And he  happily allowed himself to be controlled, even when, with her tacit  consent, he ran off in a wretched pair of leather pants with his Lazian  friend, rifle over his shoulder, proudly returning with a couple of hares.  Sometimes one of his sons accompanied him.The eldest, the tight-lipped Suren, dreamed of Europe, and was on the  verge of departure. But he adored his simple father and had no desire to  leave him. His preference would be perversely respected by destiny.Suren read a lot, and thought a lot. He smelled blood in the air, caught  the scent of evil. But who pays attention to a boy of fourteen, who speaks  rarely and grudgingly, who cries alone at night, dreaming of a woman’s  lap, a maternal refuge in which to disappear and hide?Garo, the second son, also spoke little and thought even less. He acted  out of a loving instinct, without reflecting, with a perfect economy of  gestures. He could calm any crying, whining, or shrieking baby; his  fleeting presence alone lulled and soothed a helpless, insecure community,  for which each day might take a bad turn, where   the elders tell stories not of witches and ogres but of   the slaughters of twenty years before, or ten, counting   as a kind of rosary the list of massacred or vanished   relatives.The third son was Leslie the Brit, who was “conceived on a stormy night,”  according to Sempad; it was “a calm night with a full moon,” joked  Shushanig. His parents claimed not to know why he had always been called  the Brit. “Did the name come first, or the nickname?” their friends would  slyly ask, recalling Sempad’s epic binge. He was typically a very  restrained drinker—at most, alcohol made him a bit sad—but once an  American missionary gave the pharmacy a bottle of medicinal Scotch,  resulting in Shushanig’s being chased around the courtyard and winding up,  indecorously, in the henhouse, the outcome being, of course, Leslie.It was pleasing, that liquid, sibilant, exotic name, written in white  letters on the bottle that the contrite parents kept as a souvenir. (An  old soldier, a veteran of the Balkan wars, later built a magnificent  sailing ship inside it, even providing it with a nostalgic cartouche that  recalled Nelson’s battles and his own dream of sailing the open seas; but  he would be among the first to die, in May 1915, surrounded by his smashed  ships.)The bottle on top of the cupboard—that beautiful Italian walnut that  Yerwant sent from Italy on the birth of his first nephew—and Leslie  beneath the cupboard. Leslie grew up alone: fought over at first like a  doll by his two older brothers, he was quickly forgotten at the birth, ten  months later, of a cute, sweet, and very normal baby girl, Aunt Nevart,  who would later live in Fresno, who did not care for children. Leslie  laughed all the time, asked if he could play with the others, was not  offended when the answer was no: he just went under his cupboard, back to  his secret lair.Then the rest: Arussiag, Henriette, and Nubar, two girls and a little boy  dressed as a girl. Along with Nevart they are the numb survivors who will,  after escaping Aleppo, come to the West. These children now look out at me  from a snapshot taken in Aleppo in 1916, one year after their rescue, just  before they embarked for Italy: their grave, childish eyes are turned  mysteriously inward, opaque and glacial, having accepted—after too many  unanswered questions—the blind selection that has allowed them   to survive. They are wearing decent orphan clothes, but they seem dressed  in uniforms of rags, and at a quick glance the eye sees prison stripes.  Their dark Eastern eyes, with their thick brows tracing a single line  across their foreheads, repeat four times, wordlessly, the fear of a  future that will be inexorable and the hidden nucleus of   a secret guilt.* From the country of the “Franks”—a typical term for Westerners.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305139753189,"sku":"NP9781400095674","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095674.jpg?v=1767736739","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/skylark-farm-isbn-9781400095674","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}