A lecture by Nancy Kricorian
Acclaimed Novelist
February 25, 2015
While doing research on the uses of political violence by “non-state actors” for her second novel Dreams of Bread and Fire, Nancy Kricorian came across a 1984 French documentary entitled “Terrorists in Retirement” (original title “Des terroristes à la retraite“). It told the story of a French Communist Resistance network made up of immigrant workers. The network’s leader was an Armenian poet named Missak Manouchian. In late 1943, the Germans arrested Manouchian and 22 members of his group, which was comprised of Eastern European Jews, Armenians, and Italian and Spanish refugees. Kricorian began to imagine what it would have been like for Armenian Genocide survivors, such as Manouchian, to live out the war years in Paris. This question became the basis for her third novel, All the Light There Was, which tells the story of Maral Pegorian, a young Armenian girl who is the narrator and protagonist of the book.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Gustave von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies
