Reading Armenia: Three Apples Fell From the Sky

The next stop after Argentina’s Fever Dream on my reading around the world challenge is Armenia. (Because I’m OCD when it comes to books, I’m reading alphabetically.)

Armenia

Before starting this project, I knew next to nothing about Armenia. Without checking a map, my mind’s eye would have placed it somewhere East of Albania (technically correct but failing to account for Turkey in between). What little I did know came from the book Birds Without Wings, which was actually set in Turkey, but dealt with the early 20th century genocide of Armenians at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Around the same time that I read that book, the American band System of a Down was peaking in popularity, so I knew from them that the Armenian diaspora had managed to hold onto its ethnic identity for nearly a century. And I think I watched a movie at SIFF once that was set in Armenia. It was about an old man living alone after the fall of communism, confused by a capitalist world. He survives on the hope that his son will send money from abroad, only to receive a letter from his son asking for money. It might have been Albania or Azerbaijan, but after the book I read, Armenia seems right.

That’s not much knowledge.

Wikipedia informed me that Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. The first Armenian state of Urartu was established in 860 BC. It was the first nation to officially adopt Christianity, and they still use a unique alphabet established in 405 AD. From the early Middle Ages into the 20th century, Armenia was repeatedly divided, conquered, and reformed, passing under the partial or total control of the Byzantine, Ottoman, Persian, and Russian empires.

Like most nations, their 20th century was a bloody one. During WWI, the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 million Armenians. Armenia was briefly independent before being absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1922. They became independent again in 1991, and immediately became involved in a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan. The violence ended in 1994 with a ceasefire that held until six bloody weeks in 2020. The conflict remains officially unresolved.

Choosing the Book

For my round the world journey, I’m looking for novels set in the country in question by an author from that country writing in the language of that country. Ideally the author would have lived there while writing, rather than be an exile or emigrant. Whenever possible, I prefer the author to be a woman, and when the country has been colonized, I prefer the author to be from an indigenous ethnic group rather than that of the colonizers. It’s best for my budget if my local library carries the book. I don’t think that any book so far has met all the criteria.

A Year of Reading the World recommended Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian. It sounded like an amazing book, but it was nonfiction by a male author. As an alternative, they suggested the novel Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan. The novel sounded interesting, and the Armenian author is female (although she moved to Russia as an adult and writes in Russian). My library had a copy of the book. I decided not to look any further.

Three Apples Fell From the Sky

Bibliocommons describes the book this way:

High in the Armenian mountains, villagers in the close-knit community of Maran bicker, gossip, and go about their daily lives sustaining one another. A plot to bring two residents together soon gives the village something new to gossip about.

Bibliocommons description

That description was clearly written by someone who cares deeply about plot. And as is often the case with book blurbs, it’s accurate as far as it goes, but misses the point completely. A Year of Reading the World does it more justice by saying that the book falls somewhere between slice-of-life and magical realism. In a nearly deserted town where only the old people are left, two life-long neighbors are brought together by their friends’ meddling. That central narrative takes place over 13 months in an unidentified time period. But the narrative is nonchronological in the way that the wandering thoughts of an old person’s internal monologue meander from present circumstances to historical events.

Through the three sections of the book, the reader pieces together a timeline of hardships from famine and locusts through war, earthquakes and landslides. But I could never be certain if the war was WWI or II or even the conflict that is technically still ongoing – or perhaps earlier than all of these. It’s best to let such details go, because the point is that even when bigger events affect the village, Maran is a place out(side) of time.

Conclusion

Reviews talk about how the events described are mostly those of hardship and sorrow, but the book has a hopeful, even heartwarming effect. Certainly the “central love story,” such as it is, contributes to that effect. But I think it goes deeper, in that the people in the story have never been fed the American lie that life is supposed to be fun and happy. They accept, even expect, that life is mostly hardship and suffering. So they don’t rush to distract themselves with entertainment, and when moments of joy arrive, they know to recognize and appreciate them. Three Apples effectively communicates this message without overly romanticizing the life of illiterate peasants.

There is some romanticization, though. With only a couple of notable exceptions (one protagonist is a victim of domestic abuse for years; another character is demonized for experiencing an illness which is accompanied by clairvoyance) the villagers are not responsible for each other’s suffering. To me, that might require more suspension of disbelief than the magical elements, which honestly, reflect the lived experience of most people who live outside of academic circles. The bickering priest and postman are friends underneath it all, the nagging spouses visit with each other even after death, and when people are starving, they hear about storehouses in the city being looted. But in the village, they share out what little food there is, prioritizing households with children.

On the surface, this is the story of urbanization told from the perspective of the hollowed-out communities in the countryside. But ultimately, it’s a reminder that even when death seems near, we have no idea how many wonderful things we may yet have to experience. And if we’re lucky, discovering and reading this beautiful little book will be one of them.

Details

Three Apples Fell From the Sky, 2015
Narinė Abgari͡an
Translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden 2020
Oneworld Publications
225 pages