-Black Dog of Fate, winner of the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir.

-a New York Times Notable Book of 1997 and a "best book of the year" for the Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal.
"A landmark chapter in the literature of witness...It is one of the book's many triumphs that the incredible suffering endured by Balakian's ancestors...finds a redeeming correlative in the touching lyricism and beauty of his style...Out of silence he has crafted something new."
       --Philadelphia Inquirer
"A fascinating and affecting memoir...written in sorrow and anger, and with great sensitivity, Black Dog of Fate is at once a family memoir, a history of the extermination of the Armenians in Turkey, and the story of a young man's passage into adulthood...In calling for a formal acknowledgment of, and apology for, the Armenian [genocide] by the Turkish government, Balakian wants both closure for the victims and the possibility of forgiveness for the perpetrators. But some crimes are beyound redemption and cannot -- should not -- be either forgotten or forgiven."
       --New York Times Book Review, selected as a Notable book of 1997
"A prose masterpiece...Some memoirs are compelling for the private dramas they make public, others for the historic events to which they give witness, and still others for the quality of their prose and its structuring. Precious few excel at all three -- Nabokov's Speak, Memory remains the standard. Now Balakian ups the ante a bit, writing a memoir that not only compels in all three areas, but that carries within it an urgent and timely appeal that a dark moment in world history not be revised out of existence."
       --Publishers Weekly (boxed and starred), selected as one of the Best Books of 1997



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    Biography
    Peter Balakian, American poet, critic, and author of Black Dog of Fate; Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English and Director of Colgate's Center for the Study of Ethics and World Societies 1998-1999.

    Other Works by Peter Balakian
    Acclaimed American poet Peter Balakian is the author of four volumes of poetry including Dyer's Thistle, his most recent, and his classic cycle of poems about his Armenian past Sad Days of Light, about which Elie Weisel wrote: "His visions are burning, his tone soft, his poetry heartbreaking,". Balakian is also the author of a critical work, Roethke's Far Fields.

    About Black Dog of Fate
    At the center of Balakian's memoir are family members who were survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, when more than one million Armenians were exterminated and another million were deported from their ancient homeland in Anatolia by the Ottoman Turks. Powerful and beautifully written, Black Dog of Fate tells a universal story about survival against great odds, the journey between tradition and assimilation, and moving forward from the haunted past to the promise of the future.

    Response From Critics
    Since its release in May 1997, the critical response to Black Dog of Fate has been overwhelmingly positive, with glowing reviews from the most prominent publications including: The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Providence Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Publisher's Weekly, and the Boston Book Review.

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