The book I mentioned before about the Armenian genocide is The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey (2016). I peeked at it at the library because of the Armenia mention, still fresh in my mind from reading about World War I. Turns out it was exactly kind of what I would be looking for in wanting to know more about the Armenian genocide, often treated as a side note.

The book is written by the granddaughter of a survivor of the genocide who had committed his experience to writing in hopes that the story would not be forgotten. The book also tells her own story of discovering her family history and re-tracing her grandfather's path during the genocide, which started in 1915 and continued even after the war's end and her grandfather's escape.

The book goes back and forth between the past and present, not unlike how Godfather 2 went back and forth from Michael's main story and Vito Corleone's past story. It's a narrative gimmick which may not be for everyone but I was sympathetic to it. People telling personal stories delving into their past can be stories unto themselves, and there is a lot to be taken from the author's own odyssey. The hundred years in the title connects her with her grandfather, and the odyssey applies to both as well.

The book apparently took a long time to write, about 10 years of research and travel. Her own journey was likely the easier part as it is a first-hand account. For her grandfather's story, she needed his memoir to be translated for her, and then further research and historical corroboration to put it in context and flesh it out into a broader context and experience.

She doesn't include a translation of the memoir as a primary source even in appendix. Her presentation of his story is an interpretation and possibly enhancement, even embellishment, using whatever artistic or narrative license that was her prerogative. It's enough that her mother was a catalyst and involved in the endeavor to accept that the final product is a reasonably accurate representation of what happened.

I was riveted by the book. I even thought that maybe it might be worthy of being made into a movie. Lord knows people should know about the Armenian genocide, especially since the Turks continue to deny or try to justify it. As the book points out, you can't even mention it in Turkey under the current administration without great personal risk. In a relatively recent episode of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" in Turkey, he asks questions of people he knows from past visits, and whereas they talked freely before, this time they politely plainly stated that they preferred not to respond to particular questions. The official Turkish denial of the genocide is ostensibly among the reasons the EU won't even consider admitting Turkey as a member.

Personally, it was a meditation on suffering and the human capacity to endure. Not me, mind you, any upset to my world and I'd be among the first to die; natural selection. Unless we're talking about my capacity to endure the pointless banality of my life. As to suffering it made me very grateful for my circumstances and how much I don't have to complain about. Like I'm not going to complain about the cold, look at what he went through! Cold? Bring it on, I'm not even going to wear a jacket.

(One last aside on the Armenian genocide. People have linked the genocide as having inspired Hitler's final solution with his quote on the lines of, "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's possible that when he decided to eradicate the Jewish population from Europe, his inspiration was the Turks, but a little internet fact-checking, because the internet never lies, shows that quote was made in regard to Poland at the start of WWII. 

Still, though, while reading the book, there are many mentions of Germans observing the genocide occurring and being disturbed, but unwilling to interfere since the Ottomans were their allies. I kept imagining the Germans thinking, "How inefficient, ve Germans can surely do a better job".)