Review of Sosi

Sosi

Who remembers the Armenians?

This was the question that Adolf Hitler is said to have asked when he embarked on the genocide of European Jewry in the 1930s.

It was considered at the time a rhetorical question for it seemed that no one had contested, protested, or remembered the murder of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turks beginning back in 1915.

Except, of course, as Canadian-born author Linda Ghan so poignantly points out in a novel published her in Winnipeg by Signature Editions, it was never true that no one remembered. The Armenians always remembered themselves.

It is this memory of self that sits at the heart of Sosi, a remarkable, heart-breaking and beautifully written story about the universal and timeless themes of love, loss, longing and displacement.

Ghan lives in Japan and has written fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults. In Sosi, she brings together an eccentric and memorable global cast of characters in the years immediately following the Second World War.

Sosi, the novel's narrator, is the orphaned child of an Armenian mother and Turkish father who is taken in by Gracia and Samuel, a Jewish couple who raise her as their own, first in Turkey and later in Jerusalem.

There, amid the sights and sounds of this most cosmopolitan of cities, the family is befriended by Varti, a tough-talking widowed Armenian-Canadian cab driver with a heart of gold.

Varti becomes a mentor to the young and naive Sosi, who soon falls in love with Ara, a genocide-obsessed Armenian revolutionary photographer. When Ara returns to Turkey and disappears, Varti insists that Sosi, the now widowed Gracia, and Sosi's young daughter Sammi, join her in her hometown of Montreal.

Settling in Canada, Sosi, now wilful and worldly, struggles with the distance she has travelled from her roots and the memories of those she loved and left behind. Yet she is determined to succeed so that Sammi can "grow up in a country that had no massacres, no wars, no genocides...(and) would know only songs of life." This determination to give her daughter what she never had is not a dream easily realized for Sosi.

She is haunted by her losses, doesn't fit in, resents Ara for his choosing ideology over her, and seeks solace in alcohol and strange men. Her pain is palpable, her sorrow is deep and it seems to be shared by all of the Diaspora Armenians that she meets. Like Sosi, they long ago learned that genocide is neither easily forgiven nor forgotten, no matter who might argue otherwise. It continues to linger, shaping and destroying life and love and hope for generations to come. The Armenians, the European Jews, the Sudanese. They all remember.


— Sharon Chisvin The Winnipeg Free Press

More Reviews of this title

Sosi

Who remembers the Armenians?

This was the question that Adolf Hitler is said to have asked when he embarked on the genocide of European Jewry in the 1930s.

It was considered at the time a rehtorical question for it seemed that no one had contested, protested, or remembered the murder of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turks beginning back in 1915.

Except, of course, as Canadian-born author Linda Ghan so poignantly points out in a novel published her in Winnipeg by Signature Editions, it was never true that no one remembered. The Armenians always remembered themselves.

It is this memory of self that sits at the heart of Sosi, a remarkable, heart-breaking and beautifully written story about the universal and timeless themees of love, loss, longing and displacement.

Ghan lives in Japan and has written fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults. In Sosi, she brings together an eccentric and memorable global cast of characters in the years immediately following the Second World War.

Sosi, the novel's narrator, is the orphaned child of an Armenian mother and Turkish father who is taken in by Gracia and Samuel, a Jewish couple who raise her as their own, first in Turkey and later in Jerusalem.

There, amid the sights and sounds of this most cosmopolitan of cities, the family is befriended by Varti, a tough-talking widowed Armenian-Canadian cab driver with a heart of gold.

Varti becomes a mentor to the young and naive Sosi, who soon falls in love with Ara, a genocide-obsessed Armenian revolutionary photographer. When Ara returns to Turkey and disappears, Varti insists that Sosi, the now widowed Gracia, and Sosi's young daughter Sammi, join her in her hometown of Montreal.

Settling in Canada, Sosi, now wilful and worldly, struggles with the distance she has travelled from her roots and the memories of those she loved and left behind. Yet she is determined to succeed so that Sammi can "grow up in a country that had no massacres, no wars, no genocides...(and) would know only songs of life." This determination to give her daughter what she never had is not a dream easily realized for Sosi.

She is haunted by her losses, doesn't fit in, resents Ara for his choosing ideology over her, and seeks solace in alcohol and strange men. Her pain is palpable, her sorrow is deep and it seems to be shared by all of the Diaspora Armenians that she meets. Like Sosi, they long ago learned that genocide is neither easily forgiven nor forgotten, no matter who might argue otherwise. It continues to linger, shaping and destroying lfie and love and hope for generations to come. The Armenians, the European Jews, the Sudanese. They all remember.


— Sharon Chisvin The Winnipeg Free Press

Sosi

Black, White and Grey 

Historical fiction, when it's good, breathes life into the past, blending imagination with fact to educate and engage.  

Sosi examines the Armenian genocide and its aftermath through the story of protagonist Zeyneb Sosi Arta.  The story begins in Turkey with Sosi, half Armenian and half Turkish, being labelled an infidel (i.e. part American) by the locals.  Afraid for their child's life, her parents send her away in the city to live with Jewish family friends, Aunt Gracia and Uncle Samuel.  Sosi's parents are subsequently murdered and she is left to face their deaths and wrestle with her double identity.  

Sosi embodies the book's larger themes of identity, culture, and difference, and their intermingling.  Things are never black and white: Sosi is first known by her Turkish name Zeyneb, or "blessed one," after the prophet Mohammed's daughter.  When Aunt Gracia wants Sosi to marry a Turkish boy, she resists and begins using her Armenian Christian name, Sosi Arta.  "Everybody's always telling me what I am, and who I shouldn't betray, and who I shouldn't marry or who I should," says Sosi.  She feels pulled in many directions, surrounded by Muslims, Jews, Christians, Armenians, and Turks.  

Eventually the family moves to Jerusalem, city of many religions, and Sosi falls in love with Ara, a radical young Armenian photographer.  After Sosi has their child, Ara decides he must go to Turkey to document the disappearance of the Armenians and help force the Turks to admit to the genocide.  But he disappears, and suspecting he has been killed, Sosi moves with her aunt and child to begin a new life in Montreal.  

Through its intertwining of cultures, Sosi illustrates the complicated notions of good and evil, and of difference.  Sean, a family friend, says to Ara, "We're all the same.  You got your good guys and your bad, and sometimes the good guys aren't so good and the bad guys aren't so bad.  You can't just sit back and decide you know who's who and what's what." 

Sosi succeeds as a creative rendering of history: those interested in learning about the Armenian genocide and it's impact will appreciate this novel.  Like the photographs Ara takes, it serves as a testament.  By examining history, Ghan encourages readers to ask important questions. 


— Catherine Paquette Montreal Review of Books

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