The Fool (, Khent’ë, ) is an 1880 Armenian-language novel by the Armenian writer Raffi, one of the best-known novels by one of Armenia's greatest novelists.Ronald Grigor Suny - They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else : A History of the Armenian Genocide - 1400865581 2015 Page 76 "The novels of Raffi, particularly Khent (The Fool) published in 1880, had their loyal readers both in [...]" Set during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the plot tells a romance set against the background of the divided Armenian nation.
Publication The novel was first serialized in the Tiflis newspaper Mshak in 1880, then published as a separate edition in Shusha in 1881.
Setting and structure
The novel is set in three districts near the border between the Russian and Ottoman Empires: Bayazit, Alashkert, and Vagharshapat.
The novel opens with four fast-paced chapters describing the Turkish siege of Bayazit, a historic episode from the last Russo-Turkish war.Report on the Russian army and its campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878 by F. V. Greene, D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1879, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000007718525;view=1up;seq=411 p. 385 After a harrowing depiction of the battle, its outcome is left in suspense as chapter five suddenly shifts the focus to an earlier time to tell the story of a village in Alashkert and a romance caught in the treacherous sociopolitical crosscurrents of the war. The succeeding twenty-nine chapters present a rich ethnographic account of country life in this particular region of Western Armenia, while depicting the ideological themes that dominated Armenian life at the time through a set of powerful, competing actors. The novel concludes in Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin).
Translations
The Fool has been translated into English three times: by Jane Wingate in 1950; by Donald Abcarian in 2000; and by Kimberley McFarlane and Beyon Miloyan in 2020. It has been translated into French, Russian (twice), Spanish, and other languages. References