Discover the Series: Gems of Armenian Literature
Where Armenia's greatest writers meet their youngest readers
The “Gems of Armenian Literature” series introduces young readers to celebrated works of Armenian classical fiction through short, illustrated adaptations. Each title draws on a masterpiece by a major Armenian author — Zabel Yesayan, Grigor Zohrap, Hagop Baronyan, Eroukhan, and others — retold in approximately 30 pages while preserving the voice and spirit of the original. Through vivid illustrations and accessible language, children encounter the richness of their literary heritage and develop an early appreciation for the authors, characters, and stories that shaped Armenian classical writing.
General Information
Age Group: 11+ years
Genres: Fiction - Classics (JUV007000) - Historical (JUV016000)
Structural Data: 30 average pages per book - 50 average words per page
Educational Characteristics
This series helps children form a genuine, early relationship with Armenian classical literature as living stories with characters worth caring about. Through richly illustrated adaptations, students meet authors whose voices shaped a civilization: their irony, their tenderness, their moral seriousness. Reading alongside these characters — who face poverty, injustice, or difficult choices — children develop both literary sensibility and an understanding of the world those authors inhabited. The series is designed to leave young readers curious, not satisfied: a first encounter that evolves into a lifelong connection with Armenian writing.
Literary Heritage
Discover the foundational works and authors of Armenian classical literature through age-appropriate illustrated adaptations.Historical & Social Awareness
Explore the lives of diverse social groups: merchants, laborers, families and clergy, in Armenian communities of Constantinople, Tiflis, and the wider region.Critical Thinking & Moral Reasoning
Encounter characters facing genuine ethical dilemmas, where right and wrong are rarely simple, and develop the habit of thinking beyond surface events.Cultural Identity
Build a sense of belonging to a rich literary tradition, connecting children to a shared Armenian cultural memory.Appetite for the Originals
Experience carefully adapted excerpts that leave children curious about the full works, laying the groundwork for deeper literary engagement as they grow.
Inside the Series
Zabel Yesayan — whose tender yet fearless prose made her the most celebrated Armenian woman writer of her era — opens the gates of Silihdar, the Constantinople neighborhood where she was born. Through vivid childhood memories of gardens, family, and belonging, she reveals the world that shaped a fierce love of her people — one she would defend, pen in hand, for the rest of her life.
Raffi — whose lyrical prose awoke a generation to the Armenian cause — follows Murad, a young man from the Salmast region, driven by oppression and poverty into a life of disguise and deception at the fringes of society. Murad was the inevitable byproduct of a people left without education, protection, or hope. Honest labor becomes his redemption. Through encounters that shake him to his core, he finds his path toward his people’s liberation — a journey that continues across the remaining volumes of Raffi’s Sparks.
Krikor Zohrap — the Prince of the Armenian short story and one of the Ottoman Empire’s most distinguished lawyers — observed Constantinople with a gaze that few others have been able to replicate. In this volume, drawn from three of his collections, that irony moves from a schoolroom to a moonlit window to a prison corridor — turning on his characters and on himself with equal precision. Three windows into a world rendered with the sharp, compassionate eye of someone who understood justice — and how rarely it arrived.
Hagop Baronian, the father of Armenian satire and the Molière of Constantinople’s Armenian community, skewered social pretension with a precision that has not aged a day. In these two stories from The Damages of Civility, his characters cannot bring themselves to ask for what they need: a man endures a barber who draws blood rather than cause a scene; another suffers an absurd chain of indignities no one will name aloud. Both scenes escalate into pure farce. The discomfort is real — so is the laughter.
Aram Haigaz, whose simple and direct language, warm humor, and sharp insight made him one of the most beloved storytellers of the Armenian Diaspora, captures the world through the eyes of a children. In these two stories selected from the volume Live, Children!, we encounter children’s letters addressed to God—lines that are curious, compassionate, and surprisingly witty. Or, children whose instinct to protect the lives of animals proves more wise than that of all the practical adults surrounding them: a reality that life, in the end, confirms as well. This book will make children smile, while filling the adults beside them with the desire to become children once again.
Yeroukhan, whose realistic prose was a lifelong homage to those the world overlooked: the fishermen, oarsmen, and porters of Constantinople, among others. In this story, he introduces us to Touma: an elderly fisherman who, along with his nets, carries a fear of what tomorrow may bring. This is a story about the weight of unbearable consequences in a man’s life—consequences he never intended. Yeroukhan does not judge; he simply bears witness, leaving the analysis and the emotion of what he saw to the reader.