World War I (1914-1918)
The more you read about the First World War, the more you realize that the centuries meet there. The career of nation-states, the legacies of imperialism, the entanglement of colonialism, the pace of technological development, the gamemanship of ways of doing battle dating back to the Roman Empire, and the irresistable rise of 20th Century powers all collide in a four-year war.
Here I stock a mix of traditional histories, fiction, and other ways of telling the story that echoes into our present day.
Bloodied, But Unbowed: A Memoir of the Ashur & Arshaluys Yousuf Family
Bloodied, But Unbowed: A Memoir of the Ashur & Arshaluys Yousuf Family
In this memoir, author Alice Nazarian tells the story of her parents and family in the shadow of the Armenian/Assyrian Genocide. Her father, Ashur Yousuf, a prominent Assyrian intellectual and professor at Euphrates College in Kharpert, Turkey, became a victim of the Genocide in 1915. Her mother, Arshaluys Yousuf, heroically struggled on after her husband's death, raising their six children while helping educate countless young children in orphanages and schools in the Middle East.
The memoir comprises a narrative of the turbulent life of Arshaluys and a section devoted to writings by and about Ashur Yousuf. This English translation, while faithful to the original Armenian, contains some new material and an updated genealogy of the descendants of Ashur and Arshaluys Yousuf.