Making Literature Travel

Born in Beirut to Armenian parents, Viken Berberian was nine years old when the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. His family then left for Los Angeles, where Berberian grew up until leaving to study at Columbia University in New York, and later at the London School of Economics. Initially an independent journalist for, among others, the Los Angeles Times, he later began to write novels. The Cyclist, published at Simon & Schuster six months after the September 11 attacks, deals with terrorism. After working for a period in the financial sector, Berberian moved to Marseille, France, where he wrote his second novel, Das Kapital, which tells the story of a Wall Street trader who attempts to change the course of history in order to increase his profits. Berberian then lived in Paris before leaving with his family for Erevan, where he currently resides, writing and pursuing research in the Caucasus region and at the Matenadaran, one of the richest ancient manuscript and document archives in the world. Berberian’s short story “The Plagiarist” takes place in Paris and was recently published in the French journal Décapage.