SERBIAN TRANSLATION OF JEAN CHAT TEKGYOZYAN'S NOVEL THE FLEETING CITY

Jean Chat Tekgyozyan’s novel The Fleeting City has been published in Serbian translation by Čigoja štampa publishing house.

Tekgyozyan is mostly known in his fiction for his fantastical cartoon-animated descriptions. In The Fleeting City, for instance, one of the characters has hair that has branched out like a tree and come alive. Another character projects the faces of animals onto his friends. This style gives Tekgyozyan the liberty to write as if he were drawing an animated film with words on paper, and it draws the reader into a fantastical 3D world where inanimate objects come to life and humans take on unsuspecting forms.

Gagik and Grigor, tell the same story from two different perspectives, adding and subtracting events, giving the reader a more holistic view of what happened. Tekgyozyan is best known for his cartoon-animated style of writing, he is also praised for the themes he touches on – themes that are widely deemed controversial or taboo in Armenia. Some of these themes are concerned with politics, such as oligarchy and corruption, but most of them reflect on socio-cultural differences and the prevalent ignorance and intolerance toward them, including views on sexuality, homosexuality, suicide, and drug addiction.