To Go On Living

Stories

By Narine Abgaryan
Translated by Margarit Ordukhanyan, Zara Torlone

Coming in April 2025: Set in rural Armenia in the aftermath of war, Narine Abgaryan’s heartwarming short stories show people finding hope and purpose again.

Read a Sample Support independent bookstores with your purchase

Available Formats:: Hardcover

Hardcover Buy for $24.95

Hardcover

Amazon Barnes & Noble Bookshop

About The Book

Set in an Armenian mountain village immediately after the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, these thirty-one linked short stories trace the interconnected lives of villagers tending to their everyday tasks, engaging in quotidian squabbles, and celebrating small joys against a breathtaking landscape. Yet the setting, suspended in time and space, belies unspeakable tragedy: every character contends with an unbearable burden of loss. The war rages largely off the book’s pages, appearing only in fragmented flashbacks. Abgaryan’s stories focus on how, in the war’s aftermath, the survivors work, as individuals and as a community, to find a way forward. Written in Abgaryan’s signature style that weaves elements of Armenian folk tradition into her prose, these stories of community, courage, and resilience celebrate human life, where humor and love and hope prevail in unthinkable circumstances.

View Table of Contents

About The Author

Narine Abgaryan

Narine Abgaryan was born in 1971 in Berd, Armenia, to a doctor and a school teacher. Read More

Acclaim

Narine Abgaryan’s stories describe universal pain of war that transcends boundaries and ethnicities. As an Azerbaijani, I appreciated these narratives of Armenians who lived through war between Azerbaijan and Armenia and carry its scars. The author shows how wounds of war linger from generation to generation. The everyday realities of traumatized people who have to live with memories of war and loss come alive in these pages and remind us that suffering, like love and mercy, is above politics and can be a uniting force between former enemies.

Agshin Jafarov, Azerbaijani novelist
Narine Abgaryan is an Armenian who writes in Russian and lives in Germany. As her Russian reader and admirer, I will say that in our literature she is one of a kind: she is absolutely at home and actually occupies one of the most venerable rooms. This book is about Armenia, a country that has seen much suffering. Yet despite describing tragic and at times terrifying events, To Go On Living contains neither desperation nor bitterness. It contains only grief, love, and hope.

Eugene Vodolazkin, author of Laurus
I was blown away by these stories of war told through the lives of ordinary folk in a small rural community. Understated and exquisite, full of compassion and humanity, humor and hope, they enrich us with their tender portrayal of resilience in the face of brutality and tragedy. Narine Abgaryan is a writer of genius.

Mary Chamberlain, author of The Dressmaker’s War