Buchpräsentation/Autorengespräch: Vom Himmel fielen drei Äpfel

What remains of a place when almost everyone has left? And what keeps people alive when they believe their story has already come to an end?

Narine Abgarjan takes us to the fictional mountain village of Maran. Once, about five hundred families lived here. Wars, drought, famine, natural disasters, and migration have nearly depopulated the village. Those who remain are mainly the elderly—people who refuse to leave their homes, their memories, and the graves of their loved ones.

One of them is 58-year-old Anatolia. One morning, convinced that her last day has come, she calmly prepares for death. But her neighbor Wassili suddenly appears at the door with a gift and a marriage proposal. What begins as an ending becomes the starting point of an unexpected love story.

Abgarjan tells her story through many interwoven episodes: of love and loneliness, birth and death, of old customs, dreams, and the small catastrophes of everyday life. The dead appear in dreams, white peacocks herald births, and miracles are part of reality. In this way, the novel combines the Armenian storytelling tradition with magical realism.

The title echoes the closing line of Armenian fairy tales: “An apple for the one who saw, an apple for the one who told the story, and an apple for the one who understood.”

Narine Abgarjan, born in 1971 in Berd in the Tavush region, is one of the best-known contemporary Armenian authors. The novel has been translated into 23 languages and was awarded the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize.