My Ledger

Holy Translators! The students of Rose and Alex Pilibos's revolutionary translation course, together with their instructor and new Mesrop Mashdots, Hratch Demiurge, have translated the never-before-translated My Ledger (Armenian, Իմ Ձեռատետրս, erroneously but more commonly known as Հոսհոսի Ձեռատետրը). With the first ever full color, living portrait of the great blue-eyed satirist (yes, he had blue eyes...not that you could tell from the grainy black and white images available), the cover, translation, preface and introduction contain much else that is new, bold, refreshingly honest and timely.

In this penetrating literary diary, Hagop Baronian, one of the world’s great but lesser-known satirists, chronicles the life of 1880’s Constantinople, the colorful cosmopolitan capital of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. As an Ottoman Armenian, Baronian follows the day-to-day developments of the international issue known as the ""Armenian Question"" on the fate of Christian Armenians under Muslim Turkish control. In the process, he exposes both the perfidious and self-serving European powers and the thoroughly corrupt and indifferent Ottoman government, which either ignored or suppressed calls for reforms and consistently failed to provide Armenians protection from blatant oppression and unchecked Kurdish terror in its eastern provinces. We also get a no holds barred portrait of the Armenians of Constantinople, who, even while Armenia to the east experienced famine and oppression, ate, drank and made merry, blindly pursuing a selfish and superficial life of morally bankrupt material well-being to the exclusion of literature, art, education and everything else that elevates the spirit. Using biting satire as a means to discourage vice and encourage virtue, the great satirist finds much to ridicule, from lazy clergy and do-nothing politicians, to disorganized organizations and a theatrical stage turned meat-market for ogling beautiful Armenian actresses. My Ledger's timeless and hilarious observations cut to the bone in an unsentimental and lucid style, proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Translated by: Noy Hovaghimian, Marina Manvelian, Anna Gasparyan, Mark Barsikhian, Shant Melkonian, Arthur Atanesian, Jennifer Ghazarian, Elizabeth Mkhsi-Gevorkian, and Lilit Akopyan.