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AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLER, ZABELLE • AUTHOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES REVIEWED, ALL THE LIGHT THERE WAS
Nancy Kricorian named a creative activist on the Wallpaper* USA 400 list
In vivid, poetic prose, Nancy Kricorian’s The Burning Heart of the World tells the story of a Beirut Armenian family before, during, and after the Lebanese Civil War.
“You won’t be able to put this book down."—Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero • “vivid, reverberating life.”—Aram Saroyan, author of Still Night in L.A.
Returning to the fabular tone of Zabelle, her popular first novel, Kricorian conjures up the lost worlds and intergenerational traumas that haunt a family in permanent exile. Leavened with humor and imbued with the timelessness of a folktale, The Burning Heart of the World is a sweeping saga that takes readers on an epic journey from the mountains of Cilicia to contemporary New York City.
"Like colorful miniatures—from a childhood of elders haunted by the Armenian genocide, to girlhood and adolescence amidst war in Beirut, to marriage and children in New York at the time of 9/11—Nancy Kricorian finds just the right scale to bring her heroine’s passage to vivid, reverberating life."
—Aram Saroyan, author of Still Night in L.A.
"An arrestingly beautiful novel of how families draw us together, but also push us apart. Set amidst the backdrop of displacement and war, The Burning Heart of the World illuminates how we carry history deep into even the most forgotten corners of ourselves. Once you start reading about Vera and her family, you won’t be able to put this book down."
—Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero
"Kricorian understands the craziness of uprooting people and of scattering them around the world. She also understands the spirit of the grandmother which believes in the magic of the birds of the desert that protect and watch over her and her family in all calamities"
—Arpi Sarafian, writer at Mirror Spectator
"This is a fast-moving, relatable story that would be a good addition to a historical fiction section or fiction of special interest to women. Fans of Lisa Wingate and Chris Bohjalian will also enjoy."
—Susan Cox, Library Journal
"This beautiful, heartfelt book weaves humor, romantic foibles and love into a coming-of-age story that is a prayerful lament for the victims of war."
—Eleanor J. Bader, In These Times
“A wonderful novel … Tough and moving.”
—NPR host Scott Simon, Open Book
Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as with Teachers & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Award. She lives in New York City.