Chimes from a Wooden Bell

Born in England in 1917, the author was the daughter of Dora Collingwood and Ernest Altounyan, a doctor raised in England whose father was Armenian and mother Irish, and whose friends included John Ruskin, Arthur Ransome and T. E. Lawrence. In this chronicle of her family with its roots in widely different places and cultures, Altounyan tells of her childhood in Aleppo (Syria) and in England, and of her experiences of the vivid contrasts between the British empire and subjugated Armenia. This informed generational and personal history includes descriptions of massacres of Armenians by Turks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set down without sentimentalizing, the details of barbarity are all the more affecting. (Feb.)