ARI Literary Agency’s writer Susanna Harutyunyan’s novel Ravens Before Noah has been published in Spanish translation by Armaenia Editorial (translator Vartan Matiossian).

The novel is set in an Armenian mountainous village in 1915-1960. An old man with his grandson, young Harut, the only survivors of their family, escape from massacres of Armenians in Turkey in 1894 and establish themselves in the ruins of demolished and abandoned village. They become founding fathers of this mystical and secret place, hidden from the whole world. As the village grows bigger with new inhabitants and becomes a place for a new beginning for many, a self-governed community, that unconditionally relies on the rules established by Harut, now their only leader. They survive in this secret shelter, cut from the rest of the world, by selling or exchanging their own agricultural products in the villages down the mountain, already under newly established Soviet rule. At Harut’s trips to these villages, he comes across people who are struggling to free from the tough soviet regime and they are offered to join the community and agree to accept the established lifestyle in the village. In 1915, after the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, a new wave of survivors arrives to the village. Harut falls for a beautiful girl who had been tortured and raped by Turkish soldiers. She is pregnant and an old mid-wife of the village, according to an already existing tradition, has to kill the baby as soon as it is born, to wash away the shame of the violence. But twins are being born and they do not succeed as Harut protects the young mother, Nakhshun and the baby girls.