I first became aware of Armenia in 1988. I was working for the Australian Red Cross at the time the massive earthquake decimated the population, killing 25 000 and destroying the homes of half a million people. But even then, I was not really cognizant of Armenian history, specifically the genocide of 1915 which resulted in the deaths of one and a half million people, and the creation of hundreds of thousands of stateless refugees. In response to this horrific event (the precursor to the Holocaust of World War Two), a series of international terrorist attacks occurred around the world, including Australia, up until the 1990’s. In December 1980, the Turkish consul-general to Sydney and his bodyguard were assassinated in upmarket Vaucluse. Armenian culture has a rich history and a bloody past littered with conflict and disaster – why then, do we know so little about it?

Author Carrie Tiffany was one of the first Australian writers to instil in me a love of writing and an ambition that I could perhaps write myself. Her previous books Mateship with Birds (which won the inaugural Stella Prize) and Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living are both wonderful examples of a writer who truly loves words and delights in the craft of writing. Her recent novel Exploded View (Text Publishing 2019) is a slim volume narrated from the perspective of a young girl who doesn’t speak (and in fact there is almost no dialogue at all in the book), and recounts with spare and beautiful prose her abusive life and her dreams of escape.