The Burning Heart of the World

The novel follows an Armenian family in Beirut across three periods: the years before the Lebanese Civil War, the war itself, and the aftermath. Their story reaches back to the mountains of Cilicia and forward to present-day New York City.

The family lives in permanent exile. Lost worlds and traumas passed from one generation to the next stay with them wherever they settle, and the book traces how that inheritance shapes each life. Nobody in the family is allowed to forget what was left behind.

The tone recalls the fable-like voice of the author's first novel, Zabelle. Humor lightens the telling, and the prose is vivid and poetic. The timeless feel of a folktale runs through a saga that spans several generations and continents, so the pace is that of a long family history rather than a single plot.

Reading it means moving between homelands, from a Lebanese city at war to a Cilician past and an American present. The question that runs underneath is what a family carries with it when it can never settle for good, and what it passes on to the children born after the leaving.