EXILED WRITERS AND A WHIRLWIND CALLED JOURNEY TO VIRGINLAND: SOLZHENITSYN AND MILAN KUNDERA REVISITED
Some of literature’s most outstanding works have been penned by exiled writers. Ostracized in their own societies and deemed by their native countries’ ruling elites as being too honest, hence too dangerous, exiled writers – whether self-exiled or banished outright – seem to share a heightened awareness of life’s larger patterns and possibilities, in part because persecution has made them stronger, more alert, and as ever dedicated to human rights and freedom of expression.
With the publication in 2010 of his novel Journey to Virginland, Armen Melikian quickly joined the ranks of celebrated exiled writers who lambaste their homelands’ oppressive regimes while simultaneously embodying a collective conscience, a certain crystallization of wisdom, which strives to give expression to the suppressed potentiality of a people.
In Armenia, Melikian was made into a persona non grata for writings that denounced provincial mores, social inequity, xenophobia, ultranationalism, religious tyranny, and government corruption. In no uncertain terms exiled from his homeland, Melikian went on to write a dazzlingly multilayered novel that, like the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Milan Kundera, transcends a specific locus to become a work of genuinely universal relevance.
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