Orhan's Inheritance

A strange inheritance reveals troubling secrets for a Turkish family in this “remarkable debut novel” of love, grief, and the Armenian genocide (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

Orhan Türkoglu’s grandfather Kemal not only lived through the Armenian Genocide of World War I, but went on to build a dynasty out of his kilim rug business. Now, when Kemal is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan must return to the small Turkish village of his youth to pay his respects and claim his inheritance. While Kemal’s will leaves the business to Orhan, the family estate has been left to a strange woman no one in the family has ever heard of before. Thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, elderly Seda Melkonian lives in a retirement home for Armenian Americans.

Intent on righting this injustice, Orhan travels to California. But his journey unearths a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan’s family is built—a story that could unravel his own future.

“Stunning . . . At turns both subtle and transcendent.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Rich, tragic, compelling, and realized with deep care and insight.” —Elle