Kinga Kali

Two recent books on the Armenian cult of the dead function as symbolic materialization of the myth of return among assimilated Hungarian-Armenians and constitute an important act of collective memory-formation among this diaspora community, writes anthropologist Kinga Kali.

An Albanian girl is caught between the patriarchal cruelty of village life and the communist assault on traditional values. She flees to Tuzla in Bosnia, in the hope of finding the freedom to live as a woman denied her by the custom of “sworn virginity”.