My Brother’s Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia

Why a Booktrail?

1990s: The story o f Monte Melkonian

ISBN: 978-1850436355
Genre:

What you need to know before your trail

What do ‘Abu Sindi’, ‘Timothy Sean McCormack’, ‘Saro’, and ‘Commander Avo’ all have in common? They were all aliases for Monte Melkonian. But who was Monte Melkonian? In his native California he was once a kid on cut-off jeans, playing baseball and eating snow cones. Europe denounced him as an international terrrorist. His adopted homeland of Armenia decorated him as a national hero who led a force of 4000 men to victory in the Armenian enclave of Mountainous Karabagh in Azerbaijan. Why Armenia? Why adopt the cause of a remote corner of the Caucasus whose peoples had scattered throughout the world after the early twentieth century Ottoman genocides? Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother’s road: a journey which began in his ancestors’ town in Turkey and leading to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of Mountainous Karabagh.

Travel Guide

Booktrail it to Armenia

Markar Melkonian spent seven years unravelling the mystery of his brother’s road: a journey which began in his ancestors’ town in Turkey and leading to a blood-splattered square in Tehran, the Kurdish mountains, the bomb-pocked streets of Beirut, and finally, to the windswept heights of Mountainous Karabagh. Monte’s life embodied the agony and the follies bedevelling the end of the Cold War and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Yet, who really was this man? A terrorist or a hero? My Brother’s Road’ is not just the story of a long journey and a short life, it is an attempt to understand what happens when one man decides that terrible actions speak louder than words. A searing and unforgettable testimony of the revolt against justice denied.

This is an excellent book, well-written, and driven by a sense of commitment which never overshoots into sentimentality or chauvinism. Christopher Walker; Markar Melkonian recounts in unflinching and fascinating detail the nearly unbelievable saga of his brother Monte’s life and death, from an all-American childhood in California’s Central Valley to his youth as an armed revolutionary in Beirut and his death as an Armenian hero in Artsakh. With a brother’s memory and a philosopher’s keen judgement, Melkonian reanimates a truly remarkable life.