Three Apples Fell From Heaven
A novel of import and style, set in 1915-1917, the years of the Ottoman Turkish government’s brutal campaign that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Armenians.
Through a series of chapters that have the weight and economy of poetry, Micheline Aharonian Marcom introduces us to the stories of Anaguil, an Armenian girl taken in by Turkish neighbors after the death of her parents who now views the remains of her world through a Muslim veil; Sargis, a poet hidden away in his mother’s attic, dressed in women’s clothing, and steadily going mad; Lucine, a servant and lover of the American consul; Maritsa, a rage-filled Muslim wife who becomes a whore; and Dickran, an infant left behind under a tree on the long exodus from an Armenian village, who reaches with tiny hands to touch the stars and dies with his name unrecorded. Through these lives, we witness the vanishing of a people.
Three Apples Fell From Heaven is an elegy to the final days of Orientalism and an elegant memorial to the victims of the twentieth century’s first genocide. Together, the stories of these lives form a narrative mosaic—faceted, complex, richly textured, a devastating tableau.
“Animated by a resolve that ancestral stories will not be forgotten, and that those who are dead will continue to be cherished.”
“The fierce beauty of her prose both confronts readers with many breathtaking cruelties and carries us past them…But the novel is much more than a catalog of horrors, however brilliantly described. It is also about love and tenderness, the pleasures of custom and ritual, the moments of unexpected generosity and courage and, above all, the necessity of remembering—oneself, one’s family, one’s language, one’s history.”
–The New York Times
“Powerful…Marcom’s writing is intensely poetic.”
“This is an exquisite, vivid, heartbreaking book. It lushly restores one's soul while giving voice to the many silenced souls of the Armenian genocide. A breathtaking debut…”
—Cristina Garcia
“Powerful”
—Scotland on Sunday
“Chronicles the 20th century’s first genocide with an unnervingly effective blend of imagination, artistry and grisly historical fact…these unsparingly visceral vignettes assume an almost unbearable potency.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
“As a third-generation American-Armenian, Micheline Aharonian Marcom bears the weight of her own family history with extraordinary grace…moving…Marcom doesn’t resort to sentiment or shock tactics, but lovingly renders each scene with slow, languorous rhythms.”
–The Guardian
“Lyrical…from the start you feel as though you are in the presence of an authentic voice, in this case a voice that weeps and wails and growls and shouts and chants and moans and sings about the 20th Century’s first—but least-known—ethnic massacre…Marcom is so talented… [Three Apples Fell From Heaven ] will stay with its readers a good long while.”
–Chicago Tribune
“Micheline Aharonian Marcom has woven a heartrending tapestry from the lost time, lost places, and lost voices of the Armenian genocide. Spectacularly gifted, tender, wise, and terrible in rage, Marcom has produced a powerful novel that attempts to retrieve one of the most infamous crimes of the twentieth century from the event horizon of history.”