Groundbreaking US Novel, Journey to Virginland
A Groundbreaking American Novel, Journey to Virginland, Redesigns the World Political Geography
“This is the book that America needs in order to survive.” ~~ Paul McCarthy, Professor of literature (25 years acquisitions editor at Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, and Doubleday)
Journey to Virginland: Epistle I, the highly anticipated debut novel by the American author Armen Melikian, will be released on December 31, 2010, announced Emily Weiss at Two Harbors Press. The book will be available in hardcover (ISBN 978-1-935097-51-8, $23.95), paperback, and electronic editions through thousands of bookstores in the United States and worldwide.
Set in the fictional yet all too recognizable Republic of Virginland, Melikian’s novel tells the story of Dog, the impish antihero who distills his personal odyssey of self-discovery into a formidable, eminently cogent critique of our time’s breakneck paradigm shifts.
An unapologetic creature of the street, endowed with near-encyclopedic knowledge and a bona fide bastard’s ruthless wit, Dog parses the monolith of collective hallucination by laying bare the mortally shoddy building blocks and constructs of national tradition, social mores, and cultural positioning as well as the untouchable dogmas which cement them.
As he proceeds to expose the sacred cows ensconced in various tiers of the societal pecking order, Dog intersperses his critique with a personal quest for meaning and identity which takes him from Virginland, his spiritual ground zero, to the farthest reaches of the Western world and back again, through rumination and flashback. Dog populates the journey with an evolving procession of loves, sexual liaisons, run-ins with officialdom, and face-offs with gatekeepers of culture, institutionally sanctioned literature in particular.
Melikian’s core enterprise is to draw out zestful, often tongue-in-cheek, yet always supremely versed discourse on the overarching issues of our time via the essentially picaresque narrative of an enlightened scoundrel. What the reader may not necessarily suspect at the outset of the novel is that the key factor which animates Dog’s energies, no matter how dastardly they might seem, is a profound vulnerability tinged with the sorrows of loneliness, alienation, and the irreducible yearning for “home.” Thus Journey to Virginland is punctuated with passages of achingly beautiful emotional resonance, whereby the palpable human toll of the social and cultural ills broadsided by the author are made manifest.
Journey to Virginland has already earned international critical acclaim. In his review of the novel, Paul McCarthy, a New York Times bestselling author and professor of literature at the University of Ulster, writes: “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 as unique in concept and execution as Journey to Virginland.”
McCarthy continues: “In this extraordinary book, there is so much originality in every way, and so many levels and depths of meaning, theme, narrative, etc., that I had to keep slowing my pace, until I could read and ‘inhale’ each word.”
A foremost attribute which sets Journey to Virginland apart from so-called novels of ideas is its equally exuberant and erudite portrayal of the post-9/11 human condition, making for a sustained sense of urgency which airily steers clear of the professorial or ponderous. Indeed, Melikian is a master of registering our most fundamental discontents through the prism of the here and now, even while carving out entire vistas of background analysis.
It is armed with this modus operandi that the author takes to task today’s obdurate obstacles to human self-actualization and fulfillment, including a globalism run amok, imperialist hubris posing as cultural benevolence, corporate greed and the widening altar of consumerism, powerhouses of organized religion more than ever intolerant of intellectual and spiritual freedom, and oppressive gender politics based on “national tradition.”
An illustration of Melikian’s critical observations is the following passage, in which he depicts the rampant Virginlandese practice of taking sexual advantage of female employees by their male employers:
“You would be dead wrong to think that the crotalidic firemonkey is satisfied to concentrate on a single victim. It was my female friends who directed me to the truth. As follows: women take turns to enter the bozo’s office, proceed willy-nilly to share with him bodily fluids, enjoy his bawl, so as to remain the profligate’s favorite. Those who refuse to offer their legs are duly violated. Many return home in tears or are given their notices.
“Terminated are the honest workers, to be replaced by those who brandish eye-popping attributes.
“Women who get to taste the firemonkey’s lechery baptize him a ‘shriveled lemon.’ Otherwise they keep their mouths shut in order to ‘safeguard’ their families.
“Some have grown complacent, lead a double life. See no other solution, chuckle at the suggestion of relying on the justice system. What justice system? Policemen themselves apply all known laws of tail-hunting upon the women who seek their protection.”
While Dog’s peregrinations, geographical and otherwise, cede a plethora of such observations, laced invariably with deadpan humor and the pain of personal experience, they are subsequently elucidated across a deeper pane still, as the protagonist expands the conversation with intricate commentaries on philosophy, religion, history, art, mythology, language, and lore.
The net effect of Melikian’s novelistic project is a certain regenerative clarity which points at the indisputable possibility of self-liberation. When all is said and done, what presents itself to the reader is a breathtaking vision of human transformation, as naturally arrived at and necessary as day following night.
Although Journey to Virginland is set for general release in late 2010, limited copies of the novel, as part of a pre-publication run, are already available and can be purchased through http://www.JourneyToVirginlandcom. The site contains an excerpt from the book and a redefined map of the world by Dog. Journey to Virginland will also be available online through BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon China, and Amazon Japan, as well as numerous independent booksellers worldwide.
About the author: Armen Melikian holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the American University, Washington, DC. He has also studied mathematics at a number of colleges including Harvard. Eschewing a career in either politics or science, he has instead devoted himself to literature since the late 1990s. Journey to Virginland is his first novel. Melikian lives with his wife in Los Angeles
ENDS