#OTD 8 Dec 1883, Hagop Oshagan, an #Armenian writer, playwright & novelist, was born in Bursa, Ottoman Emp. Among his many novels are the trilogy To One Hundred and One Years, The Harlot, and his best-known work, Remnants, which have been translated into English by G.M.Goshgarian
Oshagan was born in 1883 as Hagop Kufejian in Soloz, a village near Bursa. Oshagan was spared the fate of many of his fellow writers and was able to elude the Turkish secret police until early 1918, when he fled from Constantinople to Bulgaria, disguised as a German officer.
After the armistice, he returned to Constantinople in 1919, where he taught literature, actively participating in literary activities of the Armenian community. In 1922, as many other Armenian intellectuals, he left Constantinople permanently after the arrival of Kemalist forces.
He lived for a brief time in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and then worked as an instructor of Armenian literature in Egypt (1924-28), Cyprus (1928-35), and Palestine (1935-48), where he forged a reputation as a charismatic educator and prolific writer of fiction, drama, literary criticism.
He died while on a visit to Aleppo, on the eve of a planned visit to Deir ez-Zor, where hundreds of thousands of Armenians had perished during the #ArmenianGenocide.
The genocide defined Oshagan's larger project — the literary reconstruction of the lost ancestral homeland. He wrote his major works in exile. He devoted his knowledge of Armenian literature, his intimate experience of village life & of Turkish-Armenian relations to this project
His output as a literary critic and historian is grounded in the monumental Panorama of Armenian Literature (10 vols., 1945-82), which has been used as a textbook in Armenian high schools. He is also the author of shorter, book-length volumes of literary studies.
His son Vahé Oshagan (1921-2000) followed in his father's footsteps. A poet, short story author, novelist, essayist, and literary scholar, he was one of the most important writers and public intellectuals of the Armenian diaspora.
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