Black Dog Of Fate: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Peter Balakian (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author of four volumes of verse, Peter Balakian writes with the precision of a poet and the lyricism of a privileged suburban child in 1950s New Jersey. He is shadowed by his relatives' carefully guarded memories of past trauma: the brutal Turkish extermination in 1915 of more than a million Armenians, including most of his maternal grandmother's family. Balakian seamlessly interweaves personal and historical material to depict one young man's reclamation of his heritage and to scathingly indict the political forces that conspired to sweep under the rug the 20th century's first genocide.

From School Library Journal

A poetic reminiscence of growing up in the '60s takes a sharp turn as the author discovers and explores his family's painful memories of the Armenian genocide in the early years of this century.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046500704X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465007042
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > History > Asia > Armenia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully told, May 30, 2003

By 

methylethel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past (Paperback)

This is a beautifully written book-- a lyrical nostalgia for 1950s suburb life haunted by the invisible presence of an Armenian family's violent past. Balakian has worked magic with this mingling of personal and historical narrative. He does falter a bit in the last couple of chapters, getting a tad preachy when the narrative speaks perfectly well for itself, but that's forgivable.

Read it because it's a lovely memoir. Read it because it's a slice of history your social studies curriculum probably left out. Or just read it.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars riveting and devasting, February 16, 2001

By 

David W. Lee (edmond, ok United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past (Paperback)

This book is about the Turkish slaughter of the Armenian Turks during World War I. It is also about an Armenian-American's search for his family's past, and his present identity as viewed through one of the most horrific events of world history, an event made even more unimaginable by the fact that it occurred during the twentieth century.

Mr. Balakian's prose overwhelms without being self-pitying or maudlin. I can still smell and taste of walnut and lemon in an Amenian-American household in the 1950's, juxtaposed with the life of a boy who is living under the cloud of the horror of what happened to his ancestor in Turkey in 1917, before he became conscious of what actually occurred.

This book left me reeling and depressed for days. It is a book that must be read.

David W. Lee [e-mail]

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening saga of an Armenian-American, February 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past (Paperback)

My boyfriend is Armenian and once mentioned the genocide that took place in April, 1915. I had no idea what he was referring to and was embarrassed at my lack of education...

Since America has decided to ignore the Armenian tragedy in all of its history books, I took it upon myself to become more educated on these events and share what happened with everyone I know. I bought this book to learn more about the Armenian culture through the eyes of someone who was also just beginning to learn about his own culture as he grew up in America. I found that Peter Balakian's book was one of the most eye-opening, identifiable stories of Armenian history. Even his descriptions of the various Armenian foods made my mouth water and my stomach ache with hunger.

My mother and father (who are German and Filipino) are now reading this story as well. We often comment on how shocked and amazed we are at how such tragic events happened to the Armenian people and which went totally unpunished, much less acknowledged, by world leaders and historians to date. It's absolutely shameless that Turkey would go on the record as having denied that such a genocide even took place. The resulting evil effects of the Armenian massacre have been felt worldwide throughout many generations. Hitler himself once stated in a speech on August 22, 1939, "Who after all is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians..." He said this in preparation for the invasion of Poland and he subsequently planned to use the Armenian genocide as a model for his Jewish concentration camps, expecting that the world would ignore his actions just as it ignored the massacre against the Armenians.

Buy this book and educate yourself about a large piece of history that must never be forgotten. You won't be disappointed.