The Gendarme
by Mark T. Mustian
List Price: $25.95
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780399156342
Publisher: Putnam Adult
To those around him, Emmett Conn is an old man on the verge of senility. A World War I veteran, he’s been affected by memory loss since being injured in the war. Now, at the end of his life, he’s beset by memories of events he and others have denied or purposely forgotten.
In Emmett’s dreams he’s a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turker. A young woman among them, Araxie, captivates and enthralls him. She becomes the love of his life. But then the trek ends, the war separates them. He is injured. Seven decades later, as his grasp on the boundaries between past and present begins to break down, he sets out on a final journey, to find Araxie, and beg her forgiveness.
Alternating between Turkey at the dawn of the twentieth century and Americs in the 1990s, The Gendarme shows how love can overcome nationalities and politics, and how the human spirit fights to survive in the face of hopelessness. It is a transcendent novel.
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1. Do you like Emmett Conn? Does knowing what he did during the war change your opinion of him? Is it possible to be a good person in spite of having done evil things?
2. Do you think it is possible to completely block out some memories or to recover others that have been “lost”?
3. Do our memories of the past change as we get older?
4. The conflict between the Turks and the Armenians involved religion, yet God and religion are largely absent from the book. Why do you think that is? Do you think religious differences are sometimes used for political purposes?
5. What kind of transformation does Ahmet undergo during the march? If he hadn’t fallen in love with Araxie, do you think he would have had any change of heart about what he was doing?
6. Emmett’s story is in part an immigrant’s tale. What about America works as he thought it would? What doesn’t?
7. Why do you think the author chose to have Emmett committed to a mental institution? What comment do you think the author is trying to make here?
8. Why do you think Emmett reminds Violet of the child she gave up for adoption?
9. In the dream, Ahmet postulates that the Armenians more or less deserved their fate because of their actions. Yet how does he react as Emmett Conn when Recep’s nephew says essentially the same thing?
10. What do our dreams tell us about ourselves? When Emmett finds himself strangling the home health aide Ethan, does that speak to his past or to something else?
11. At the end of the book, Araxie’s granddaughter discloses that Araxie was, in fact, not Armenian. What does this say about the Turkish-Armenian conflict? What do you think the author was trying to say with this plot twist?
12. Why is Emmett so fixated on Wilfred? Is he trying to “live his life over,” as Violet claims? What else might he see in Wilfred?
13. When Ahmet prays at a mosque in Aleppo, a Christian church’s spire comes into view and he says he “has bowed before both of these things all his life.” Yet when he sees Araxie for the last time, the difference in their religions stands as an obstacle between them. Is this resolved?
14. When Emmitt emigrates to the U.S., why do you think he leaves Islam behind but refuses to join his wife’s church?
15. Do you think the author is making any commentary on how we treat the elderly in our society?
16. What do you think is Emmett’s view of Turks and Armenians by the end of the book?
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"Mark T. Mustian has written an extraordinary novel dealing with some of the most difficult issues of the twentieth century, issues that profoundly threaten this new century as well. The Gendarme explores humanity’s capacity for large-scale evil and how that capacity expresses itself through ordinary, small-scale, individual lives. This is a harrowing and truly important novel by a splendid American writer."
— Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Hell and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"One reads this masterful work thinking all the while of its literary cousins --- The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Snow by Orhan Pamuk. Books such as these, novels like The Gendarme, writers like Mr. Mustian, keep our world afloat amidst the tempests of history. Humanity would no longer recognize itself, its enduring passions and cruelties and triumphs, without them."
— Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning author of Easy in the Islands and Swimming in the Volcano
"I love this book. The haunting lesson from this gifted writer is that even the legacy of war cannot triumph over the human spirit. Where there is love and humanity, the human spirit triumphs. Read it."
— Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author of Prayers for Sale
"Ahmet Khan's spiritual transition to Emmet Cohn is emotionally resonant. This is an important and unique journey told with compassion and a stirring sense of humanity."
— Atom Egoyan
