Western fiction depicts Armenians as artists

The tradition in Western fiction to depict Armenians as artists is demonstrated in Richard Davy’s “The Sultan and his Subjects” (1907): “Of all the peoples who inhabit those regions, the Armenians are certainly the most remarkable. When all the surrounding tribes were lost in the intellectual sloth of barbarism, the Armenians possessed a literature.”  Meanwhile in Arthur Koestler’s “The Age of Longing” (1951) the dominant character is an extraordinary Armenian cobbler called “Grandfather Arin,” who though illiterate, is an active “member of the Hunchagist, the secret society which aimed at the resurrection of a free, independent Armenia.”

The tradition in Western fiction to depict Armenians as artists is demonstrated in Richard Davy’s “The Sultan and his Subjects” (1907): “Of all the peoples who inhabit those regions, the Armenians are certainly the most remarkable. When all the surrounding tribes were lost in the intellectual sloth of barbarism, the Armenians possessed a literature.”  Meanwhile in Arthur Koestler’s “The Age of Longing” (1951) the dominant character is an extraordinary Armenian cobbler called “Grandfather Arin,” who though illiterate, is an active “member of the Hunchagist, the secret society which aimed at the resurrection of a free, independent Armenia.”