Armen Melikian

Armen Melikian (born 1963) American author, novelist, experimental writer (aka Dog Son of Dog). Author of Journey to Virginland, 2009 (publication date: Sep 2009), classified as one of the best novels in the world by Prof. Paul McCarthy of Ulster University, Ireland, a New York Times bestselling author with 25 years of combined experience as senior editor and acquisitions editor at three of the world's largest publishing houses: "'Journey to Virginland' is one of the most creatively, philosophically, culturally, semantically, and thematically ambitious novels I’ve ever read in 35 years of my professional life. In the best sense, I’m reminded of George Orwell’s classics, and other authors of similar stature, though there is no true parallel possible with a novel and trilogy as unique in concept and execution as Journey to Virginland. I am struck by the extraordinary writing, vision, leaps of imagination, and, perhaps rarest of all, originality, which abounds in every way, and at so many levels and depths of meaning, theme, and narrative."
Journey to Virginland is the story of Dog, the streetwise antihero who tries to make sense of a reconfigured global paradigm as he embarks on a breathtaking odyssey through the lush human landscapes of America, the Slavic world, the Near East, and a spiritual ground zero called Virginland.
Through his protagonist’s richly imagined travails, Armen Melikian makes us face a world both strange and strangely familiar, in the process weaving a dazzling tapestry of philosophical, sexual, religious, and artistic inquiry. His poignant observations demolish the core tenets of meta ideologies and jockeying civilizations, inciting us to discard layer after layer of entrenched misinformation and dogma. Melikian also recasts the American immigrant experience in an exuberantly self-actualizing framework and opens a new dimension in the American grand narrative, with a lingua Americana all its own.
Armen Melikian is above all else a humanist, one of those rare thinkers whose intensity of passion matches his sharp wit and intellect; his social and moral critique is an invitation to honesty.
Brimming with black humor, piercing satire, and leaps of poetry, "Journey to Virginland," the first installment of a trilogy, arrives at a starkly beautiful enlightenment that is as inspirational as it is empowering. It is the book that encapsulates the solution to our contemporary institutional and attitudinal troubles. This may be exactly what we need in order to survive.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu