Translating Histories | Ara H. Merjian

Written by the Catalan novelist and poet, Maria Àngels Anglada, Aram’s Notebook is one of only a handful of novels on the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) by a non-Armenian author. Inspired by the fate of the murdered modernist poet Daniel Varoujan (1884-1915), Anglada’s novel follows Aram and his widowed mother on their flight toward a new life. The author’s award-winning novel The Violin of Auschwitz (1994) dealt in moving detail with the Holocaust. Aram’s Notebook treats an earlier injustice in prose for which poets and poetry loom large. Its publication in English raises important questions about the role of fiction in the narration of historical tragedy, as well as the stakes of translation in the diffusion of “world literature.”

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About the Speaker
Ara H. Merjian is an art historian, critic, and Professor of Italian Studies at NYU, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and Comparative Literature. He is the author and editor of several books, including Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris (Yale University press, 2014), Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art, Neo-Capitalism (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Surrealism and Anti-fascism (Hatje Cantz, 2024), and Futurism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2025). Before arriving at NYU he taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program. His book from Yale University Press, Fragments of Totality: Futurism, Fascism, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde won the 2025 Robert Motherwell Book Award and the 2025 Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association. His latest book, Beat, Black, Queer: Pasolini’s Other America will come out with Verso next year.

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