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Join us in our library and online for another exciting AI Book Club session with the author Rubina Sevadjian for the launch of her latest book, The Long Shadow, the final instalment of the Shadow trilogy. The other two books are In the Shadow of the Sultan and The Darker Shadow. The event will be followed by a wine reception.
The story follows on immediately from events in The Darker Shadow. It concerns the systematic murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1916, and then the attempts at the annihilation of the nation.
Like its two predecessors, this is a novel written in the hope that the story will provide younger readers and those who do not know the recent history of the Armenian people with enough information to explain events, and in the hope that it will encourage them to find out more. I hope it will go a little way to give answers about what motivated the actions of the Ottoman Empire, and in particular the Committee of Union and Progress triumvirs.
Once again, this is a work of fiction, based on fact. All of the major characters in the story are fictional but based loosely on actual people. However, some of the American missionaries and Europeans who were important eyewitnesses have been named, and sometimes paraphrased.
The story follows twins Bedros and Dzovinar into adulthood as they travel across the landscapes of the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Their journey takes them from the shores of the Black Sea to Cilicia, Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus. Set during the seven years 1915 to 1922, the story describes the horrors of the Armenian Genocide and the final heroic Battle of Aintab.
Reviews
The fate of a nation, tragedy, and hope are all bestowed upon young Armenian twins as they set forth on an epic journey towards their new home. The dramatic transition of life, from childhood to maturity, in Rubina Sevadjian’s engaging story, The Long Shadow, will not leave the reader untouched. Brilliant.
Ruben Giney, Film Director
Based on some of the countless stories of the Armenian Genocide, we see how the “remnants of the sword” scraped by after their ousting from their ancestral lands by the Turks. Of particular interest are the well-researched segments pertaining to the refugees’ stay in Cyprus, as well as the story of a disillusioned (fictional) volunteer of the Légion d’Orient.
Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra, Researcher-scholar and unofficial historian of the Armenian-Cypriot community.
In the same way one’s life flashes before one’s eyes before death, The Long Shadow unpeels the layers of culture, history and daily life for Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at the end of its era. Accessible to all ages, this wonderful tale is almost an untelling of the Armenian race. On their journey west to safety, following the forced exile of Armenians from decimated cities, Bedros and Dzovig take the reader through not just the horrors that unfold during the genocide, but the history, architecture, cuisine and daily rituals for each region they pass. It is a rich, heartbreaking cultural trip through an Armenia that is rapidly being erased.
Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss, author of The Seamstress of Ourfa
Rubina Sevadjian is a third generation diasporan Armenian, whose family left Asia Minor in the 1800s and was scattered across the world, no members remaining in their ancestral homelands. Born and raised in Africa, she now lives in The United Kingdom. She has researched the Armenians of Ethiopia, and the work of her father B. A. Sevadjian about whom she has given talks in Cyprus, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. She has also written articles and book reviews for the Armenian Weekly.