Three Apples Fell from the Sky

A remote mountain village called Maran, clinging to a high ridge in the Armenian highlands, where a few dozen elderly villagers outlive famine, earthquake and war and a late love still finds room to grow. Maran is invented, but it is drawn from the author's own home town of Berd in the Tavush region of north-eastern Armenia, so the map anchors the story in the real Tavush highlands rather than a fictional coordinate.

Anatolia

Maran, the mountain village

The village

The whole novel unfolds in Maran, a shrinking village on a mountain ridge cut off from the world below, where a handful of old people keep going after their children have left and disaster after disaster has thinned the population. The village is invented, but the author places its spirit firmly in the Tavush highlands she grew up in.

Throughout

inspired by Maran is a fictional village and has no real coordinate. Abgaryan has said it is drawn from her home town of Berd, so we site it on the high ground just above Berd, where such a ridge settlement would sit.

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