1895, Ourfa, a cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. Khatoun meets her husband, Iskender, twice her age, a poet and a dreamer who adores her but cannot express it in words. Around them, the Ottoman Empire is crumbling, the world heading towards war and the Armenian minority subjected to increasing repression, culminating in the genocide of 1915. As Iskender retreats into his books and alcohol, losing land, money and business, Khatoun holds their family together by sewing for the wives of the men who persecute them; her creations inciting lust, love and fertility. The family evades the death marches to the Syrian Desert only to lose everything when exiled by Mustafa Kemal and the birth of the Turkish Republic. What follows is a tale of love, loss and redemption in the diaspora told by four generations of women, each becoming the guardian angel of the next.
Book launch followed by book-signing and refreshments. Wines generously supplied by Makkas Winery, Cyprus.
Admission: £5
Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss is Armenian English from Cyprus. She moved to London at eighteen, began as a dancer at the Raymond Revuebar and followed that by playing a slew of exotic foreigners on British television. She trained at RADA and spent twenty years as an actress in London and Europe. She married, moved to LA, started a family, continued to work in voiceovers, and wrote her first book, Seamstress of Ourfa.
Directions:
22 Bus from Sloane Sq/Oxford Circus tube station
C3 Bus from Clapham Junction train station or Earls Court tube station
Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss is Armenian English from Cyprus. She moved to London at eighteen, began as a dancer at the Raymond Revuebar and followed that by playing a slew of exotic foreigners on British television. She trained at RADA and spent twenty years as an actress in London and Europe. She married, moved to LA, started a family, continued to work in voiceovers, and wrote her first book, Seamstress of Ourfa.
Directions:
22 Bus from Sloane Sq/Oxford Circus tube station
C3 Bus from Clapham Junction train station or Earls Court tube station
Tube | Fulham Boradway
Overground | Imperial Wharf
