Zareh Vorpuni

Zareh Vorpouni (Armenian: Զարեհ Որբունի; May 24, 1902 in Ordu, Ottoman Empire - December, 1980 in Paris, France) was an Armenian novelist, editor, and writer.

Zareh Vorpouni was born Zareh Euksuzian in Ordu, a city in Turkey on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. He received his early education at the local Movsesian school. His father was killed during the 1915 Armenian genocide, but his mother managed to flee to Sevastopol, Crimea, with her four children, Zareh, Nourhan, Melanoush and Garabed. After a year the family moved to Constantinople, where Zareh attended (1919–22) the Berberian school, and in 1922 they moved to France. They lived in Marseille for two years, then in Paris (1924–30) and Strasbourg (1930-37). From his early days in France Zareh was an avid reader, acquainting himself with European intellectual trends and prominent works of French literature, particularly those of Marcel Proust.

Vorpuni belonged to the group of promising young Armenian intellectuals-among them Nigoghos Sarafian, Vazgen Shushanian, Shahan Shahnur, and Hrach Zardarian: mostly orphans of the Armenian genocide-who emigrated to France in the early 1920s and produced literature that derived its themes from the social, cultural, moral, and psychological distresses of the emigres and their deep concerns about the eventual loss of their ethnic identity. In Paris he and Bedros Zaroyan jointly edited two short-lived periodicals, Nor Havadk (New Faith, 1924) and Lusapats (Daybreak, 1938–39). In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he was called up for service in the French army. He was captured and held prisoner of war in Germany until the end of the war in 1945. Recollections of his prison days appear in a cycle of ten short stories called I Khorots Srdi (From the bottom of my heart).

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