Pogrom: A Novel of Armenian History

Listed by the publisher as fiction/political history/current events, this novel purports to re-create a three-day-long Azerbaijani attack on the ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait in 1988. The pogrom (or ``riots'' according to mainstream American media, which reported death tolls ranging from 17 to 32) is seen through the eyes of an adopted teenage boy, Arshik, his father Aramais and Gerald Jacobson, an unsuspecting American journalist doing some freelance work as a travel writer. With the KGB squelching any reports of the Azerbaijani plot, the quiet life of the Armenian villagers is shattered in a three-day assault in which ethnic Armenians are separated from other villagers to be brutally tortured and murdered by their Azerbaijani attackers. Arshik and his father barricade themselves inside their house in a final desperate holdout. While Shaginyan--who despite his Armenian surname claims he is Russian--lacks skill as a novelist, he is a forceful spokesman for the Armenians in their decades-long fight with the Azerbaijanis. Readers should carefully read the foreword by Henno Lohmeyer, editor-in-chief of edition q, however, in which he says: ``This book does not claim to be a balanced, neutral report on the massacre in Sumgait.'' (Mar.)