Vache Sargsyan
Vache Sargsyan’s novel Akeldama is a unique example of Soviet Armenian Gulag literature. The author started to work on it in 1960s upon his return after 16 years of incarceration in the KGB prisons and Gulag camps. The novel under the general title Akeldama is a monumental trilogy comprised of three books: The Inimitable Story, Permafrost and Field of Blood. Through the protagonist’s eyes, which is a character that’s mostly based on the author himself, we are exposed to the brutal reality of the Gulag system.
Encouraged by a meeting with Vasily Grossman to write and reveal the truth about the system of Soviet Gulags, Sargsyan completed the first draft of the novel in 1964 and a version of it was approved for publication in this last year of the Khrushchev’s Thaw. The novel was pulled out of publication in the last minute, but Sargsyan kept working on it up until his suicide in 1987.
The first and second volumes of the novel are available in libraries and bookstores in Yerevan. The Johannissyan Institute is preparing the third part of the trilogy for publication.
The book is published with the collaborative efforts of the Johannissyan Institute and the Sargsyan family.