Suren M. Vetsigian’s Lost Armenian Homeland and the Quest for New Forms of Belonging in His Autobiography: His Guiding Hand to Serve my People

Abstract

This paper analyses the Bulgarian-Armenian writer Suren Vetsigian’s autobiographical writing, published posthumously in 2001. The story in the book reflects the author’s memory of the Armenian genocide and his life in exile abroad in different countries. I shall argue that while on the one side Vetsigian’s life choices are an emblematic example of the diasporic writers’ commitment to their language and culture as a way to reaffirm national identity, on the other hand they typify an act of self-sacrifice: the author renounces career opportunities in a Western country to sacrifice himself to an inward vision and the work of a mission for his own people, which he intended to fulfil in Bulgaria, an Eastern country.