Nancy Kricorian’s latest novel, The Burning Heart of the World, is a powerfully spare, poetic evocation of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War (1975−1990) and its long-term impact on one Armenian family living in Beirut. It’s the fourth book in a series Kricorian calls the “Armenian diaspora quartet.” The book follows Vera, whose grandmother moved to Beirut after surviving the Armenian genocide—a three-year period from 1915-1918, during which the Ottoman Empire killed approximately 1.5 million people.
During the Lebanese Civil War, Vera’s family flees to New York City; more than a decade later they witness the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Though Vera grows to become a successful visual artist and married mother of twins living in Manhattan, neither she nor her parents have fully adjusted to life in the United States. “I came here like a wounded bird from a burning country,” her father tells her. “This is no country for humans. People work all the time. When they aren’t working, they lock themselves in their houses surrounded by white fences. It’s a land of the lonely.”