Aksel Bakunts (born Alexander Stepan Tevosyan), one of the stars of Soviet Armenian literature, was known as a masterful short story writer. He was born in 1899 in Goris (Armenia) and educated at the Gevorkian Seminary in Etchmiadzin. His first publication—a satirical account of the mayor of Goris—earned him a stint in jail in 1915.
He subsequently served as an Armenian volunteer in the battles of Ezurum, Kars and Sardarabad. Between 1918 and 1919, he was a teacher, proof-reader and reporter in Yerevan. In 1920, he was accepted to the Kharkov Institute in the Ukraine to study agriculture. After graduation in 1923, he worked as an agronomist in Zangezur, a region of Armenia that features prominently in his short stories.
In 1926, he settled in Yerevan where he quickly established his reputation as a gifted writer with his first collection of short stories entitled Mtnadzor [The Dark Valley]. His oeuvre includes short stories, various individual pieces in the press, fragments of novels sadly destroyed following his arrest in 1936 and three screenplays for films produced by Hyefilm in the 1930s.
Bakunts fell victim to the Stanlinist terror and was accused of various crimes. He was arrested in 1936 and is believed to have been executed after a twenty-five minute trial in 1937.
Translated from Armenian by Nairi Hakhverdi
The Dark Valley: short stories
Aksel Bakunts
English
148 pages
Soft Cover
Taderon Press, 2008
ISBN: 9781903656907
