Born a Western Armenian speaker in today’s Bulgaria, Nigoghos Sarafian was part of a great generation (“The Paris Generation of Writers,” the Menk or “We” group) that lived in Paris but wrote and communicated in Western Armenian. Sarafian wrote The Bois de Vincennes—an 80-page personification of a park that is the history of an entire people; a depiction of love, frustration, and war; and a collection of musings on philosophy—in the 1940s, but no English translation has existed until now.

In this a singularly odd, exotic, and beautifully written book, Sarafian explores the many issues of diasporic existence and the tragic history of Armenians in the twentieth century. English language readers will discover in it a new culture, a new style, and a new way of thinking about the world. Originally published in serial form in Nayiri, an Armenian journal, this book will be of interest to historians of European and Armenian history and readers interested in translation and translation theory.