Armen Melikian
EXPRAEDIUM, is a 2024 Finalist of two significant literary awards in the highly contested Literary Fiction category, namely, the Feathered Quill Book Awards and the American Writing Awards, and has received astounding critical praise from several literary experts.'A singular provocation of a novel, rendering a mad world in a madder language. A hoedown in the ruins of civilization. Especially for readers predisposed toward the Joycean, the Pynchonian.'--Publishers Weekly.'I have never encountered a book quite like Expraedium before. Its language is formulated through an origin that remains enigmatic. The author does not seem to write to impress, and it is difficult to grasp his intentions. Each line unfolds as if it were an entirely different story of its own. Expraedium remains an unforgettable reading experience that has left a lasting impression on me.' --Maria Yinks, Manhattan Book Review. 'I wasn’t sure what to expect when I decided to read Expraedium. But what I most certainly did not expect was to find, consistently, one of the most creatively, philosophically, culturally, semantically, and thematically ambitious novels I’ve ever read in my entire life.'I am struck by the extraordinary writing, vision, and, perhaps rarest of all, originality, which abounds in every way, and at so many levels and depths of meaning, theme, narrative, etc., that I had to keep slowing my pace until I could read and 'inhale' each word. . . . Now that I’ve reached the conclusion, I am simply in awe. ’Wow!!!!’ in the vernacular.'I’ll always be with you in spirit and ever-growing admiration of who you are as a literary artist and as one of the finest people I’ve ever known.'Paul McCarthy, Professor of English (Former Senior Acquisitions Editor at Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, and Doubleday) Referred to as 'cobra poison' and 'the work of the Antichrist' by international religious figures, as 'anti-literature' by the author, Expraedium is an incendiary and energetic tour-de-force that mercilessly skewers religion, national identity, economics, gender, social mores, and the very structure of language itself.Expraedium inverts the parochial notions of language that control the evolution of identity and human expression. It opens floodgates into the English language, destabilizing it to its core yet enriching it in unprecedented ways.Equal parts satire and philosophy, polemic and prophecy, Expraedium explores Brathki’s journeys via dysfunctional social and cultural strata in his epic search for the land of Urmashu, igniting the protagonist’s inimitable voice--a voice at once acerbic, oracular, and obscure.Expraedium has been called 'heartbreaking and diabolical' as well as 'brutally raw, painfully honest,' earning the author praise and death threats, interrogations, censorship and suppression even before the work’s initial release.Expraedium is an explosive condemnation of the very canon of Western civilization. Rejecting the protocols of the conventional novel, Melikian has crafted one of the most unique, ambitious, and unforgettable voices in modern literature. A voice that has much deeper ramifications for civilization than literature itself. A voice that is as inspiring as it is infuriating, as damning as it is uproariously funny, and as fragmented as it is astute; a voice that reminds us of the very limits of our finitude and our unquenchable thirst to overcome it.
