Gurgen Marhari's controversial novel, Burning Orchards, is set in the Ottoman city of Van, Eastern Anatolia, during the period leading up to the Armenian rebellion of 1915 and relates the epic story of the events which culminated in the catastrophe of the following years, wonderfully told by one of the great writers emerging from Soviet Armenia. Written with an abiding humanity, Mahari's characters are portrayed as complex and flawed - neither hero nor villain but keenly observed and evoked with a tender humour. Burning Orchards offers a version of events leading up to the siege of Van different from the received, politically charged accounts, even daring to reflect something of the loyalty many Ottoman Armenians had felt towards the former Empire. First published in Armenian in 1966 after Mahari's long exile in Siberian, Burning Orchards (Ayrvogh Aygestanner), was banned and publicly burned in the streets of Yerevan, even though the authorities in Moscow had eventually agreed to its publication. Much against the wishes of his wife he tried to rewrite the novel, removing passages criticising some Armenian political parties and leaders, but dying before it could be finalised. The translation offered here is of the banned 1966 publication. A brilliant work, epic in scope and masterful in its depiction of the cruel displacement of an ancient people from their historic homeland, Burning Orchards is a re-discovered classic.

This title takes to a conclusion the story of Conrad, the son of Harry Bridgeman and his Armenian wife Olga, the two principal characters in Haig Tahta's Constantinople trilogy. The novel refers to events and characters not only in the trilogy but also in the novel that immediately precedes it - 'Brothers'.

In Survivor Guilt, Haig Tahta continues the story of several characters from his outstanding family saga, The Constantinople Trilogy. Carrying forward the adventure that began with those who suffered the terrors of 1915, the reader is taken on a perilous yet exciting journey through Fascist Italy and Vichy France. In the course of his electrifying narrative, Tahta explores the connection between the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Anatolia and the more notorious Jewish Holocaust through a compelling plot fuelled by the notion of guilt - not of the oppressor but of the victim who survived.

Brothers carries forward the story of Conrad and Billy, the sons of Harry Bridgeman and his Armenian wife Olga, the two principal characters in Haig Tahta's Constantinople Trilogy. Conrad, 9 years older than Billy, cool, reserved and overflowing with empathy for anyone younger or more vulnerable than himself, has loved and looked after his little brother since childhood. Separated during World War II, Conrad joins the British Army as an Intelligence officer. In 1948, after six years, he returns home to take up his place at Oxford. But already 25, Conrad finds that his life has been profoundly changed by the war, so for him the student coming-of-age rituals are banal. Billy on the other hand, is at the opposite extreme. A brilliant mathematics student, he is still naive, self-centred, bursting with teenage hormones and in love with 'love'. The brothers' relationship with each other and with the several women in their lives develops and expands right up to a moment of drama when Billy betrays his brother's love. Meanwhile, running like a thread through the narrative, the end of World War ll sees the decline and fall of the British Empire. Conrad's last assignment with the Army is to work in Palestine during the final days of the British Mandate. Billy, guilty of betrayal, and seeking love and redemption is involved in the last flickers of Empire which was the Malayan emergency.

The Siege of Darabad is a work of fiction. Darabad, as described, does not exist, but many of the events portrayed happened in one form or another somewhere in British North India during that fateful year of 1857. Without pandering to sentimental nostalgia for the vanished glories or failures of the British Raj, Haig Tahta has written a masterful novel that gives recognition to the bravery and dedication of so many eager young men caught up in that tragic conflict. Exciting and heartfelt, The Siege of Darabad is a triumphant blend of well researched history and thumping good adventure - another compelling novel from the author of The Constantinople Trilogy.

Constantinople - End of Empire is the third and final book in Haig Tahta's marvellous trilogy set in and around the city from April 1915 to the end of 1923. It carries forward the characters from the first novel, April 1915, which explored the fateful consequences of the entry by the Ottomans into the Great War, and continued through the second book, Constantinople 1920, revolving round the Greco-Turkish War and reaching its climax in the horrific burning of Smyrna. The starting point of this final part of the trilogy is the day after that catastrophic fire. It follows the same characters and the fate of those forced to flee their ancestral homes, culminating in the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the once great Imperial City.

Constantinople 1920, the second book in Haig Tahta's projected trilogy, chronicles the impending fall of the Ottomans and explores the circumstances and atmosphere of Constantinople during the British occupation of the city from 1920 to 1922. It carries forward the same characters from Mr. Tahta's first novel, April 1915, set in the Ottoman Empire at a critical moment following its fateful decision to join the Great War in November 1914. Olga, an Armenian girl, and Selim, a Turk, are impossibly in love. Their relationship, much more difficult and problematic than Romeo and Juliet, develops and unfolds during the Greco-Turkish War, reaching its shocking climax in the burning of Smyrna. An historical novel of deep insight and high passions, Constantinople 1920 brings to focus a time which echoed throughout the world and set in train events that would engulf Europe in flames a few decades later. Written with a rare sense of humanity and peopled with a plethora of characters, bold, sensitive, articulate and always fascinating, Constantinople 1920 is that rare novel of ideas and drama that appeals to both the heart and the intellect.