One of the first books on post-Soviet Armenia will come out in Italy in early July. The author of the book entitled “Armenia today: Dramas and challenges faced by living nation” is the Italian journalist Simone Zoppellaro.

The introduction to the book has been prepared by Italian Armenian writer Antonia Arslan, who is famous for her novel “Lark Farm”. The author, who has visited Armenia for many times, told Armenian News – NEWS.am the details about his work.

According to Zoppellaro, books on the Armenian Genocide have already been written in Italian, and indeed by the best historians. But little or even nothing at all has been written on post-Soviet Armenia. Many Italians and Europeans generally associate Armenia with the tragedy of the Genocide, but many people don’t know about the Karabakh conflict, as well as other problems of the Armenian people.

“For this very reason I called the book a “living nation”. This phrase is from the poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Armenia lives despite all the sufferings and happenings in its past and present history. In my opinion, this speaks volumes.  The book includes my stories for the Italian newspapers. They are linked by 2015, the year which marked the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. There I tell about the memorial ceremony, the concert of the System of a Down, dug positions of Karabakh, which I visited, Electric Yerevan protest, and the drama of the Syrian Armenians who escaped the war. 

The book is about these events. I got to know something based on my own experience, finding out other things from the meetings and interviews in Armenia and Karabakh in the recent years,” Zoppellaro said.

But how is it possible to convince the Italian readers of the impartiality of the book if they know that its author has many times been to Armenia and Karabakh, but never to Azerbaijan?

To this question he answered: “I would be glad to go to Azerbaijan, but I have been put into the black list after my first trip to Karabakh. Like my colleagues Anna Mazzone from RAI and Roberto Travan from La Stampa, now I can’t visit Azerbaijan. I have a clear answer for my numerous critics: during the Electric Yerevan protest I was one of the first to condemn the forceful actions of the police against the demonstrators and journalists and took an interview from some of them. I have never had problems with this respect, although there were people in Yerevan who didn’t like that very much. The Armenian democracy has very clearly defined limits. Oligarchs are a great evil and there is a danger that they can “choke off” the democracy here once and for all.  As a result, such a civilized society with such an enormous potential lives in poverty. All my articles and my book tell about this. As for Karabakh, I’m far from taking anyone’s side but for victims – they are not divided into camps.  I am for breeding in myself an allergy to nationalism, which, in my opinion, serves to justify what cannot be justified.

This doesn’t mean that I share the position of the European organizations on this conflict.The role of the international community is just criminal. Simulating neutrality when it is obvious who the guilty party is (for instance, when cluster bombs were used against the peaceful population of Armenia in April), is no less cruel than committing violence yourself. Dante showed great contempt for those hesitant and placed them on the threshold of Hell.  I think this decision is just even now. The fact that Russia and Putin act worse, selling arms to both sides to the conflict, in no way justifies us, Europeans.”

In her introduction, Antonia Arslan noted: “In its style - convenient and clear, but not indifferent - this is a story about Armenia and the author’s thoughts on this small and proud country.”