Orhan's Inheritance
Aline Ohanesian, 2015
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616203740
Summary
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business.
But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson.
Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.
Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Kuwait
• Rasied—Northridge, California, USA
• Education—M.A., University of California-Irvine
• Currently—lives in San Juan Capistrano, California
Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel,
Born Kuwait and raised in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Ohanesian’s heartrending debut chronicles the painful odyssey of one family against the broader backdrop of the Armenian genocide.... Ohanesian does a remarkable job of conveying the weight and the influence of time and place without excusing or excluding the human dimension that necessarily factors into the unfolding cataclysm.
Booklist
Unforgettable.... Drawing on the stories her Armenian great-grandmother told her, Ohanesian brings to life a painful, tragic history unfamiliar to most Americans (Editor's Pick).
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A harrowing tale of unimaginable sacrifice.... A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.
Kirkus Reviews
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