This well-intentioned book might irritate the scholar, but it will inform the general public, which is its intention at a time when Armenians are in the news. The book is a German journalist's contribution to the general awareness of the growing international consensus on the Armenian genocide. Indeed, the first words of the book are ‘The Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey’ (Preface). The basic assumption is that few know who the Armenians are, even though they are constantly mentioned in the media. France's criminalization of the denial of the Armenian genocide is there, as is Orhan Pamuk's well-deserved Nobel prize for his writing, often, to his great chagrin, tied by the media to his words about the Armenians and the Kurds in Geneva, rather than to his literary talent. Both were eclipsed in the news by the murder of Hrant Dink, whose portrait is one of fifty chosen by the editor to explain Armenian identity. The book's raison d’être is thus that Armenians are a hot topic.

There is an unusual and unorthodox mixture of genres. Academic articles on the genocide go together with individual portraits, ranging as widely as Charles Aznavour and the brothers Monte and Markar Melkonian, heroes of the Karabagh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, known to very few non-Armenians. The most original contribution is Wolfgang Gust's scholarly article on imperial Germany, acting as a silent partner in the annihilation committed by the Young Turks. Those by Dadrian and Akcem, in contrast, are well known and have been published elsewhere. In the preface, one reads that Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. The book's first part presents articles about the genocide, stressing that around one and a half million Armenians–men, women, and children–were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. The impression that the Armenian genocide itself is the totality of Armenian history is corrected only by individual assessments. Thus, in one of the best portraits of the book, Vartan Osganian, Foreign Minister of Armenia, like many Armenians speaks of the importance of keeping ties with Armenian history and culture. He is the only one to make the difference between Armenians born in the Middle East and still fluent in Armenian, and those who have the genocide as the sole remaining marker to define their identity. The book will not make the reader aware of this fundamental difference, for some Armenians have suffered a double loss. In the aftermath of massive displacement, they have undergone what Lemkin has termed ‘white genocide’, that is, the loss of their capacity to gain access to their own cultural heritage. Few speak Armenian in Europe or the United States, and fewer still read it.

Huberta von Voss, the editor and author of the majority of the fifty portraits in the book, has worked for many years as a political correspondent for various German daily newspapers, before becoming spokesperson of the Speaker of the Bundestag. During the diplomatic assignment of her husband to Beirut and Nicosia, she acquired the Armenian friends and informants who have guided her choices and encounters. There is an awareness of political splits, but few references to their nature, and an attempt to include both of the main political parties, and both churches. Only a handful of women feature in the fifty portraits, and this is not for lack of famous women. I personally loved the portrait of ‘Madame Anahid’, a woman who played tangos and operated the accordion in Istanbul, but missed the famous sisters Kavafian. Why not a portrait of Louise Simone or Nina Garsoian? Nouritza Matossian's picture on the cover of the book seems to show an awareness of this imbalance. It remains a pleasure to read about people I know, but the space allocated is too limited to capture anything meaningful. In the case of that fascinating individual, Vartan Gregorian, his memoir remains an untapped source. Indeed, Wikepedia does a better job, as is true of celebrity Atom Egoyan's portrait, which also consists of public knowledge available with great global ‘gettability’ on the internet, to use an annoying new term.

The book does not live up to its ambitions, such as to ‘produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence’. Shoddy attempts at history abound in the usual clichés associated with the Armenians, such as the Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark, and the first Christian state. The book also makes sweepingly optimistic affirmations, predicting that the future ‘Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present’ (Preface). Hope is never to be dismissed slightly, especially in the present dire economic and geopolitical circumstances, but it is hardly realistic to predict the future in this way.

The book claims to outline some of the historical facts and consequences of the genocide, and sets its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader. At best, it combines a sketchy history in five points with selected glimpses of the lives of successful and famous Armenians around the globe, with a good attempt to balance this with some portraits of teachers, sextons, and street musicians. On trying to capture what is the fascinating and elusive travelling culture of Armenians, Voss has crafted a mixture, neither scholarly book nor journalism, but more a hodge-podge of genres that can speak for the unyielding subject at hand. Voss presents ‘biographical sketches’ in her attempt to glimpse the long and convoluted destiny of displacement, loss, adaptation, and success, and the word ‘sketch’ is perhaps apposite for the book as a whole. It is as if someone had taken a blank page and a piece of charcoal, marked some points, and started a few lines, but had forgotten to connect them, because the way from point to point was lost. What is left blank or erased speaks louder than the words used to capture the elusive and complicated history of the Armenians. Such are the challenges of approaching so rich a subject: this is a praiseworthy and original attempt, but it should have had far more depth.