Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir: An American Son Uncovers his Armenian Past by Peter Balakian. Tenth Anniversary paperback edition first published 2009 by Basic Books.
New York Times Notable Book, Winner of the Pen/Albrand Award
From 1914-23, the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, carried out the systematic state-organized policy of physical annihilation of its indigenous Greek and Armenian civilian populations. I was aware of some of the history of the Armenian genocide from my familiarity of the Greek genocide as a descendant of Asia Minor (on my maternal grandmother’s side)—but this does not make a book like Black Dog of Fate easy to get through and I struggled to finish it. It is not only about the atrocities committed at the hands of the Turkish government-- but it is also a beautiful book about discovering one’s heritage. Not an easy read but an important one.
