The Armenian Launch of the Quadrilingual Graphic Narrative Last Night on Earth Took Place in Yerevan

YEREVAN — The Armenian-language presentation of the quadrilingual graphic narrative Last Night on Earth took place at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan. Developed within the framework of the EU Creative Europe programme, the project brings together literature, visual narration, and research-based storytelling to articulate a reality for which the very act of narration constitutes a boundary gesture.

The collection brings into dialogue war narratives from Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. The Armenian contribution is authored by prose writer Ani Asatryan, edited by Mikheil Tsikhelashvili, illustrated by Astghik Harutyunyan, and published by Ej Publishing House.

The first presentation of the English-language edition took place during Yerevan BookFest 2025, followed by the project’s inclusion and presentation in the official exhibition selection of the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair.

The graphic narrative Last Night on Earth approaches the material of war through a sustained methodology of fragmentation, rupture, and the refusal of retelling. The work raises a central question: how can one recall or narrate a reality for which there already exists a verified archive, an established international legal framework, and extensive bodies of testimony?

The Armenian narrative deliberately avoids naming states, nationalities, or specific events, allowing the political reality to become legible through form, structure, and embodied archival presence itself.

On November 26, the Armenian-language edition of the work was presented to local readers at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies. The project had already been made accessible to international audiences from September 2025 through the publication of its English version in the Netherlands-based periodical Drawing the Times.

The Yerevan presentation maintained a restrained and quiet format, without staged readings, formal discussions, or marketing framing. The emphasis rested on the work itself—as an object of contemporary local thought and aesthetic inquiry—one that speaks through its structure while refusing to become a dramatized narrative tailored for consumption.

The Armenian narrative is currently being studied at several universities in Switzerland, England, and Cyprus, within the broader context of the author’s other works.

Formed within a field of cross-border and intercultural exchange, the graphic narrative Last Night on Earth engages questions of living memory, the politics of spectacle, and the limitations of storytelling within a contemporary environment shaped by economies of attention.

The work does not seek to produce yet another testimony or to “raise awareness.” Instead, it exposes the threshold beyond which narration becomes insufficient—when historiography repeatedly confronts its own repetition and exhausted regimes of interpretation.

Ani Asatryan’s work has appeared in international publications including Words Without Borders and Absinthe: World Literature in Translation (Michigan Publishing), and is taught in the curricula of the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Basel; and the American University of Armenia. Her quadrilingual graphic novel Last Night on Earth, developed within the framework of the EU Creative Europe programme, has been included in the official exhibition selection of the 2025 Frankfurt Book Fair.

Asatryan has delivered invited lectures and talks at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Basel; universities in Cyprus; and the University of Sussex. Her works Words and Makukachu are held in the collections of the New York Public Library, as well as the libraries of Columbia University and the University of Michigan. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Sussex and is the recipient of the grand prize of the “Ardzak 2013” literary competition. Forthcoming are the author’s first novel, Annman, as well as a second novel, a first poetry collection, and a second collection of short stories.

© Photographs: Inna Mkrtchyan