Published in 2013, The Return of Kikos by Armen of Armenia (Armen Ohanyan) is the first [*] short story collection by a Queer Armenian writer.
Armen of Armenia (Armen Ohanyan) is a fiction writer and essayist. He is the President of PEN Armenia Center since 2017. He is known for his short story collection The Return of Kikos, published in 2013. His short story Who Wants to Be a Millionaire appears in 2015 edition of Best European Fiction collection by Dalkey Archive Press. His writing is significantly influenced by his political activism. In 2015 he participated at City of Asylum Writer Residency program in Pittsburg, PA, USA as well as the Fall Residency at the widely acclaimed International Writers’ Project at the University of IOWA at Iowa City, IA.
I had been looking for somebody to tell the real story of my life and I found him at last. His name is Armen and he is the author of these lines. We have a complicated relationship. We don’t get along well together.
The Return of Kikos
The eponymous short story of the collection The Return of Kikos is a reimagining, or reliving, of Hovannes Toumanyan’s tale The Death of Kikos. Toumanyan (1896 – 1923) was a prolific Armenian poet, writer, and translator and he is the national poet of Armenia. Armen of Armenia writes in The Return of Kikos that The Death of Kikos is a tale of Armenian anxiety about the future.
You can read both Toumanyan’s tale and Armen of Armenia’s short story in Trafika Europe’s Armenian Rhapsody.
Other shorts stories in the collection include Mario Superstar and Radio Yerevan.
