The Fool (novel)
The Fool is an 1880 Armenian-language novel by the Armenian writer Raffi, one of the best-known novels by one of Armenia's greatest novelists. Set during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the plot tells a romance set against the background of the divided Armenian nation.
Publication
The novel was first serialized in the Tiflis newspaper Mshak in 1880, then published as a separate edition in Shusha in 1881.Setting and structure
The novel is set in three districts near the border between the Russian and Ottoman Empires: Bayazit, Alashkert, and Vagharshapat.The novel opens with four fast-paced chapters describing the Turkish siege of Bayazit, a historic episode from the last Russo-Turkish war. After a harrowing depiction of the battle, its outcome is left in suspense as chapter five suddenly shifts the focus to an earlier time to tell the story of a village in Alashkert and a romance caught in the treacherous sociopolitical crosscurrents of the war. The succeeding twenty-nine chapters present a rich ethnographic account of country life in this particular region of Western Armenia, while depicting the ideological themes that dominated Armenian life at the time through a set of powerful, competing actors. The novel concludes in Vagharshapat.