The Candidate is one of the most masterful, psychologically penetrating novels in Armenian diaspora literature. Published in 1967 at a time of political awakening among the descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide, the novel explores themes of trauma, forgiveness, reconciliation, friendship, and sacrifice, and examines the relationship between victim and perpetrator. The book opens in 1927 in Paris after Minas has found his friend Vahakn’s body on the floor of the apartment they share. In a fragmentary way, Minas tells of his meeting Vahakn in the cafés of the Latin Quarter; the friendship that joins them; their conversations with Ziya, a Turkish student in Paris; Vahakn’s murder of Ziya; and Vahakn’s suicide. At the core of the novel is the note Vahakn leaves Minas to explain the enigma of Ziya’s murder and his own suicide. The letter recounts Vahakn’s and his mother’s deportation from their village in the Ottoman Empire; his mother’s death and Vahakn’s adoption by a Turkish woman, Fatma, who rapes and abuses him; his feelings of alienation and self-estrangement in France; and his inability to adapt to life after trauma. Known for his innovation of the Western Armenian novel, Vorpouni challenges the narrative elements of the conventional novel by playing with subjectivity and linearity. His melding of contemporary French literary and intellectual currents produces a literary and cultural hybrid unique in Western Armenian literature.

"For Chris Edwards, the decision to transition from female to male was black and white. The question was, did he have the balls to do it? Did he have the balls to come out at a company board meeting made up of white, middle-aged executives? To endure 28 painful and extensive surgeries? Show up at his 10-year high school reunion? Date a member of the Nashville Bikini Team? The answer is yes--yes, he did"--Publisher's website.

The author defines the character of the Ottoman state in general and then interprets the state through various lenses: the state interpreted as a slave family (that is, as a macrocosmic family which includes slaves), as a missionary enterprise and an educational system, as an army, as a nobility and a court, and as a government structure. The parallel ruling institution of Islam is also discussed, and then the formal Turkish state is compared and contrasted with the religious institution. The synthesis of each of these interpretations allows for a more complete and unique understanding of the function of the Turkish state. The appendices contain a translation of an important Italian source from 1534, as well as a pamphlet in Italian from 1537 by Junis Bey and Alvise Gritti. There is also a partial table of contents of Suleiman's edicts, a comparison of the Mogul government of India and Suleiman's government, and an appendix for the origins of Ottoman government ideas and a summary of it in the sixteenth century.

Ali Pasha's resistance to Turkish forces in the 19th century.