St. Leon Armenian Church
12-61 Saddle River Road
Fair Lawn, NJ 07410
Contact: RBedevian
E-mail: RBedevian@hotmail.com
Phone: 201-791-2862
FAX: 201-791-1329
WEB:

`My Odyssey’ – Book Event to introduce English translation of Antonina
Mahari’s memoirs

January 25, 2009 at 12:15 PM
St. Leon Community Center
12-61 Saddle River Road
Fair Lawn, NJ 07410

Translation from original Russian by Jaklin Ekmekjian & Gohar Arsenyan
English Editing by Ruth Bedevian
Published by AIWA Press- Armenian International Women’s Association, Inc

My Odyssey – From the Green Fields of Lithuania, Through Exile in
Siberia, to a New Life in Armenia is the autobiographical narrative of
a Lithuanian woman, Antonina Mahari, who fell in love with one of
Armenia’s great 20th century writers, Gurgen Mahari (1903-1969). She
married him in Siberia- while both were exiled during the Stalin Era.
She begins the chronicle of her `odyssey’ with a startling tale of the
day of her baptism – a portent of the difficult road she would travel
– and carries the reader through her arrest and imprisonment amid
other innocent Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Germans by the Soviets
who quickly occupied Lithuania following the retreat of the Nazis in
the fading days of WW II. This book documents an important part of
Soviet Armenian history and also sheds light upon the character and
work of Gurgen Mahari which is valuable to the Armenian literary
world. Several of his poems appear for the first time in English
translation.

Online Contact: RBedevian@hotmail.com
Telephone: St. Leon Church Office – 201-791- 2862