Armenian Film Society & Abril Books present
The Kaleidoscope of Destiny
A Conversation and Book Signing with
Sarah Ignatius & Arpi Sarafian
Admission is Free. For more information, call (818) 243-4112.
Parking at Orange Street Parking Structure 222 N. Orange St, Glendale, CA 91203. First 90 minutes free, $2.00 per hour.
The year is 1915. War rages in Europe while Armenians in the Ottoman Empire find themselves unfairly blamed for a major military defeat. Cooped up at home, fourteen-year-old Arakel tries to ignore rumors of arrests and beatings of Armenians by focusing on the journey he’ll take with his two best friends, one Turkish and the other Armenian, on the Silk Road to China in two years, certain war will be over by then.
His life is torn apart when Turkish officials arrest almost all of the Armenian men in his town, including his father and older brother, and order nearly all of the remaining Armenians into exile in the desert amidst rumors of massacres. Tormented by armed guards, Arakel doesn’t grasp what’s happening until they strip his family of food, water, and their meager possessions and force them across the Euphrates River, where bloated corpses float by. He has crossed into the land of the dead. In a desperate struggle to survive, Arakel must rely on people of different faiths and backgrounds-Bedouins, Kurds, Arab camel drivers, Turks, Germans, even a wandering dervish-people he considers enemies-but how can he trust them?
In a barbaric world, he confronts what lies deep within the human heart. With an elegance reaffirming our collective humanity, The Kaleidoscope of Destiny reveals the courage, hope, and ingenuity to survive the darkest of times during an often-overlooked part of history and will resonate in today’s challenges.
Before publishing her debut novel, The Kaleidoscope of Destiny, Sarah Ignatius worked for many years as a human rights lawyer and as a nonprofit executive director. She taught immigration and asylum law at Boston College Law School for many years and is the coauthor of Immigration Law and the Family. She also authored a detailed report on the US asylum system for Harvard Law School’s National Asylum Study Project, and her legal articles have appeared in the Harvard Human Rights Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Benders Immigration Bulletin, and Immigration Briefings. Ignatius has received recognition from the New England Society of Children’s Books Writers & Illustrators and the National League of American Pen Women as well as Glimmer Train, and was selected as a Somerville Arts Council Literature Artist Fellow. Ignatius graduated from Stanford University and Georgetown University Law Center. She is of Armenian descent and lives in Massachusetts with her family.
Arpi Sarafian holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and a B.A. and M.A. from the American University of Beirut. She was a lecturer in English Language and Literature at the California State University, Los Angeles from 1978 to retirement in 2014. Sarafian has also taught at the California State University, Dominguez Hills and at Loyola Marymount University. She has published articles in The Armenian Observer, Ararat Literary Quarterly, The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, Armenian International Magazine (AIM), Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Publication of the Modern Language Association (PMLA), Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies (JSAS) and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of, Endless Crossings: Reflections on Armenian Art and Culture in Los Angeles and The Second Endless Crossings: Reflections on Armenian Art and Culture.