Berberian, Viken

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Berberian, Viken

PERSONAL:

Education: Educated in Armenian enclaves around the world.

CAREER:

Writer. Former researcher of exchange-traded companies for investment firm in New York, NY.

WRITINGS:

The Cyclist (novel), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Viken Berberian's debut novel, The Cyclist, spins a tale of terrorism that takes place in Lebanon. At the book's opening, the hospitalized protagonist has just undergone brain surgery after a bicycle accident, in which he was hit by a Mercedes-Benz. He fights to live so that he may complete his mission: the delivery of a bomb to a Beirut hotel. Significantly, Berberian, raised in Beirut, lost his own father in a 1986 political encounter.

In an interview with Ron Hogan for the Beatrice Web site, Berberian said that in writing the novel, he familiarized himself with the language and the "rhetoric of terror" by attending and listening to the closing statements in the trial that followed the U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya. He also obtained a copy of a manual found in a suspect's apartment, parts of which he used in the book. In addition, Berberian visited the Middle East twice to get a strong sense of the specific place from which his novel's protagonist hailed.

Food plays an important role in The Cyclist. Friends and cohorts arrive at the hospital with delectable treats that soon fill the narrator's bed and room, and they encourage him to get well so that he can attend the "baby shower," the baby being the bomb that will cause the deaths of hundreds of people. School Library Journal reviewer James O. Cahill noted that by using the exotic foods of the region as metaphors, "Berberian highlights the dichotomy of this troubled land at once both steeped in culture and simmering with violence."

Sadji is the leader of the four-person cell the cyclist joined with his girlfriend, Ghaemi, after her parents were killed by a marketplace bomb. Berberian avoids comparisons to current politics in describing the goals of the cell—called the Academy—into which the cyclist, who grew up in a multicultural village of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, is drawn. Ghaemi, who carries the cyclist's real baby, nurses him back to health so that he may carry out the mission, though she knows she may lose him.

In a review on the Philadelphia Inquirer Web site, Tirdad Derakhshani noted that Berberian "keeps us guessing about the Academy's real ideology. But we do learn that the narrator is neither Muslim nor Christian: his father is a Druze, member of a small offshoot of Islam that incorporates elements of Judaism, Gnosticism, and Neo-Platonism, and his mother is most likely a Jew. This smorgasbord of religions and ethnicities is what the novel is really about."

Matt Konrad wrote in Ruminator Review that The Cyclist is "an examination of a multi-faceted person who defies easy labels, being at once a gourmand, an amateur philosopher, a terrorist, and, ultimately, a sympathetic figure." A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the novel "deeply creepy and funny and perfectly timed."

In Book, Don McLeese wrote, "Though this surrealistic novel is as timely as a Middle East terrorist attack, the narrative, packed with deadpan ironies and repetitive obsessions, reads more like a postmodern equivalent of Albert Camus' The Stranger." McLeese went on to note that "there are causes and there are effects, but the latter rarely follow from the former in any rational sense," and he wrote that Berberian's cyclist "slips in and out of patterns of rhymed couplets, which imbue the impending terror with a singsong, Dr. Seussian quality." McLeese added: "There's almost a Rain Man-like obsessiveness to some of his repetitions."

John Ziebell, who reviewed the novel for the Las Vegas Mercury Web site, also commented on the narrator's use of couplets, comparing him to "noblemen in a Shakespeare history; it's certainly surreal, but so well done that we gladly buy it as ornament rather than affectation. And while the narrative voice is both fanciful and unabashedly intelligent, the food discussions don't all address haute cuisine; the novel's perspective wanders from the decadent tables of resort hotels to democratic Lebanese villages where all dishes are served simultaneously and without hierarchy. And the table is not just our narrator's obsession; the analogy permeates the text."

Booklist reviewer John Green wrote that this "often irreverent and sometimes funny story is an exploration, not an endorsement, of terror." A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that overall, Berberian is "a thoughtful writer, delivering a compelling psychological portrait."

Berberian's follow-up novel, Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets, was published in 2007 and received high praise from the critics. "Watching the morning finance reports at the gym these days, I've been holding my breath hoping someone will mention the prophetic genius of Das Kapital, fearing that I might fall off the tread-climber if they do," wrote Yerado Abrahamian on the Blog Critics Web site. Abrahamian added that Das Kapital "is an almost literal blueprint for the ugly dance of today's market. It is the story of falls of economic theories rarely challenged, of stocks hardly imagined volatile, and of people whose spine never twitches in front of a Bloomberg terminal."

The story revolves around Wayne, a young but extremely successful hedge-fund manager. Wayne and his company, Empiricus, seek to make money on disasters, whether it is war, natural catastrophe, or an economic collapse. Wayne soon finds himself hiring a Corsican who is seeking revenge on the company he once worked for in Corsica. Using the Corsican as a terrorist to alter markets, Wayne also finds himself beginning a correspondence with Alix, sometime lover of the Corsican. Eventually, the three come together on the island as Wayne's scheme is set to go forward. In the meantime, Wayne and Alix realize that there is more between them than just correspondence. "A quirky combination of satire and thriller, this short novel defies easy categorization," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, who called Das Kapital a "clever and interesting tale." A reviewer writing in Kirkus Reviews referred to Das Kapital as a "sophisticated, slightly daffy poke at our Masters of the Universe."