Penelope

“I was born a black panther—// untamed, fast, graceful. // And I don’t live on flesh— // but on faith, // not blood— // on fragile hope.” These lines from a poem by Goar Markosyan-Kasper tell more about her than a page of biography. Faith and hope, the ability to play with words and find meanings in them that aren’t obvious to others, a talent for giving prose poetic beauty—everything is present in her books.

Goar Markosyan-Kasper was born in Armenia, lived in Estonia, and loved Italy. But both her poetry and prose were written in Russian. And she felt the language as few others could.

A candidate of medical sciences, a doctor, and a talented poet and prose writer, she combined in her texts the lightness typical of poetry with the depth and psychological realism that distinguish true prose, along with a special view of the world—one that only those who genuinely know what life and death are, and how close they sometimes come, can have.

What do we know about Penelope? A faithful wife of Odysseus, who, while waiting for his return to Ithaca, wove an endless shroud for her father-in-law and refused many suitors who sought her hand. Goar Markosyan-Kasper’s Penelope does not live on sunny Ithaca, but in winter Yerevan of the 90s, where electricity is a luxury and a hot bath is a dream—and you have to try hard for that dream to come true. Penelope’s suitors are not as many as those of the ancient namesake, but her heart is trying to be won by a classmate who rides through the city on a “Mercedes.” And, of course, she has her Odysseus—Armen, a doctor who left for the war.

“Penelope was awakened by a ray of sunlight.” This is how the witty, sparkling novel about one day begins—one we will spend with the heroine, traveling from one Yerevan home to another and enjoying the warmth spread across these pages.