bone ash sky (katerina cosgrove)

The shadow of Palestine hangs over Cosgrove’s novel. It connects two massacres, the Armenian genocide and the Sabra and Shatila killings in Lebanon in 1982. The novel traces the forced flight of a family from Ottoman Armenia in 1916, following three generations who eventually make Beirut their home. The key narrative hook is told from the POV of Anoush, the third generation, whose grandparents were Armenian and whose father was a falangist allied to the Israeli invaders who participated in the 1982 massacre. There might be said to be a twin thesis to the book. On the one hand, with echoes of Elias Khoury, there is the logic of generational angst meaning that violence is hard-wired into people’s DNA, and history will continue to throw up more and more instances of inhuman brutality. On the other hand, the novel reaches for an optimistic, multi-faith final act, as Anoush succeeds in transcending religious difference in a cosmopolitan city which has, for now, achieved the same thing. The events of the past two years, (and I write these words on the 7th of October), would sadly seem to lend more credence to Cosgrove’s first thesis.