Three Apples Fell from Heaven

An elegant memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide--from the award-winning author of The Brick House. A New York Times Notable Book that imagines the lives of several sufferers of the twentieth century's first genocide. 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 the lives depicted in Three Apples Fell From Heaven, we witness the vanishing of a people. Together, the stories of these lives form a narrative mosaic--faceted, complex, richly textured, a devastating tableau.

About the Author :
Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and raised in Los Angeles. She has published five novels, including a trilogy of books about the Armenian genocide and its aftermath in the twentieth century, and The Brick House. She has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the US Artists' Foundation. Her first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, was a New York Times Notable Book and Runner-Up for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, won the PEN/USA Award for Fiction. In 2008, Marcom taught in Beirut, Lebanon on a Fulbright Fellowship. Marcom lives in Northern California where she teaches Creative Writing at Mills College. She is also on faculty at Goddard College in the MFA program in Creative Writing.

Review :
"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."--Margot Livesey, The New York Times Book Review "Powerful...Marcom's writing is intensely poetic."--Washington Post Book World "An exquisite, vivid, heartbreaking book...breathtaking."--Cristina Garcia, author of The Aguero Sisters "Marcom opens up a human and historical drama in startling ways. This is an impressive debut."--Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate "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 "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 "Reading Three Apples Fell From Heaven, I can believe that poetry can stop war. Micheline Aharonian Marcom's elegy to the Armenian dead--her family, her people, precious individual lives--sings so strong, rings so true that surely the hell of genocide can never happen again. She has written an invaluable work in this age of devastation."--Maxine Hong Kingston "[A] heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel...the highly mannered style manifests a debt to the postmodern novel and the fairy tale, resulting in something between a cry and a reminiscence. This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded."--Publishers Weekly "[Marcom] has chosen an unusual structure, a tapestry of many vignettes that depict a shattered Armenian culture and way of life through the memories of victims and bystanders, those who hid, those who died, and those who tried vainly to help...her story has a certain brutal force that stays in the memory."--Kirkus Reviews "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 (London) "Animated by a resolve that ancestral stories will not be forgotten, and that those who are dead will continue to be cherished."--The Daily Telegraph (London) "Powerful."--Scotland on Sunday