To Go on Living: Stories

In this vivid and harrowing linked collection, Abgaryan (Three Apples Fell From the Sky) depicts rural life in the war-ravaged borderlands between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The villagers in close-knit Berd, an Armenian mountain community, carry on despite unbearable losses. In “Tights,” the town gravedigger obtains hard to find prosthetic legs for a woman who lost her legs in an explosion that killed her young daughter. He helps the mother learn to walk again, and they marry and have three children of their own. Animals play a central role in the characters’ lives, as in “Gulpa,” about a man who struggles to accept the fact that he must slaughter his ailing cow. In the heartbreaking “Baklava,” a woman bakes a tray of pastries for her daughter-in-law to bring to her mother in a distant village, only to change her mind after a haunting premonition. The author was born and raised in Berd, and the stories are starkly realistic and often shocking in their portrayals of sudden violence, making their moments of joy all the more remarkable. These memorable tales evoke the power of the human spirit. (Apr.)