Viken Berberian
| Viken Berberian | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Alma mater | Columbia University, London School of Economics |
| Period | 2002-present |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Notable works | Das Kapital, The Cyclist, The Structure is Rotten, Comrade |
| Notable awards | Centre national du livre |
| Spouse | Garine Torossian |
Viken Berberian is a writer and essayist whose works rely on satire and defy easy categorization. Berberian's fiction and essays have been published in the New York Times, le Monde Diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Editions Inculte, (French), the The Believer (magazine), logger, and the Los Angeles Times. His novels have been translated to French, Hebrew, Italian and Dutch. They are marked by keen wit and a sense of economic and political injustice.
Berberian was raised in an Armenian-speaking household in Beirut. The family moved to Los Angeles at the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, and this experience helped shape his first novel, The Cyclist. His second novel, Das Kapital, which he has described as falling somewhere between Groucho Marx and Karl Marx, was influenced by his work in the financial industry. He has graduate degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Berberian and his family have lived in Paris, Marseilles, Yerevan, New York City and Montréal.
Berberian's first novel, The Cyclist, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. He has received recognition from the Centre national du livre (CNL) in France (2007), the William Saroyan award for international writing at Stanford University (short-list, 2003), the Soros Foundations (2013), and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2015).
The Cyclist was published six months after 9/11 and was widely reviewed. It deals with the thoughts of a nameless suicide bomber on a mission to use a bicycle race in Lebanon as a ruse for an insidious, international bombing conspiracy. The protagonist, the eponymous "cyclist," shares with readers his obsession with food. In the Boston Globe, Liza Weisstuch described the book as a "stunning debut...Throughout, Berberian heaps on profound and frequently witty insight into often unexplored territory...It's a tantalizing trip for the senses that also challenges the sensibilities.
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Wikipedia