Orhan's Inheritance
(eBook)

When Orhan's brilliant and eccentric grandfather, Kemal Türkoglu, who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs, is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in a retirement home in Los Angeles. Intent on righting this injustice, Orhan unearths a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan's family is built, a story that could unravel his own future. "Breathtaking and expansive . . . Proof that the past can sometimes rewrite the future." -Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train "Stunning . . . At turns both subtle and transcendent." -Los Angeles Review of Books "To take the tumultuous history of Turks and Armenians in the early part of this century, and to tell the stories of families and lovers from the small everyday moments of life to the terrible journeys of death, to make a novel so engrossing and keep us awake-that is an accomplishment, and Aline Ohanesian's first novel is such a wonderful accomplishment." -Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon "Rich, tragic, compelling, and realized with deep care and insight." -Elle "A book with a mission, giving a voice to history's silent victims." -The New York Times Book Review "Orhan's Inheritance illuminates human nature while portraying a devastating time in history . . . A remarkable debut novel that exhibits an impressive grasp of history as well as narrative intensity and vivid prose." -Minneapolis Star Tribune "A remarkable debut from an important new voice. It tells us things we thought we knew and shows us we had no idea. Beautiful and terrible and, finally, indelible." -Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America When Orhan's brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal is found dead, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away. Intent on righting this wrong, Orhan unearths a story of the Armenian Genocide that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan's family is built. Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel, Orhan's Inheritance. Ohanesian was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. Born in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. Her website is They found him inside one of seventeen cauldrons in the courtyard, steeping in an indigo dye two shades darker than the summer sky. His arms and chin were propped over the copper edge, but the rest of Kemal Türkoglu, age ninety-three, had turned a pretty pale blue. Orhan was told the old men of the village stood in front of the soaking corpse, fingering their worry beads, while their sons waited, holding dice from abandoned backgammon games. Modesty forbade any female spectators, but within hours the news spread from one kitchen and vendor's stall to the next. Orhan's grandfather, his dede, had immersed his body, naked except for his britches, into a vat of fabric dye outside their family home. Orhan sinks into the backseat of the private car, a luxury he talked himself into when the dread of a seven-hour bus ride back to the village started to overwhelm his grief. He wanted to mourn in private, away from the chickens, the elderly, the traveling merchants, or worse yet, the odd acquaintance that could normally be found on a bus ride to Anatolia, the interior of Turkey. He told himself he could afford a little luxury now, but the car showed up an hour late, sporting a broken air conditioner and a driver