A few books worth packing for a trip to Yerevan or reading afterwards to make sense of what you have seen.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel. The 1933 epic novel of Armenian villagers resisting the Ottoman deportations of 1915 — controversial when published, banned in the Third Reich, and still the single best literary entry point into the Genocide that shapes so much of modern Armenian identity.
Black Garden by Thomas de Waal. The clearest history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has dominated Armenian politics since independence. Indispensable for understanding the present-day relationship between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia.
Rebirth: A Story of Love, Loss and the Promise of Armenia by Sam Mardirossian. A diasporan memoir of moving from California to Yerevan in the 1990s — useful on the texture of post-Soviet daily life and the complicated relationship between the diaspora and the homeland.
My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan. Stories of Armenian-American family life in California from the great 20th-century Armenian-American writer. Not set in Yerevan, but Saroyan's voice — half of his ashes are buried at the Komitas Pantheon — is half of what the city's literary culture is built on.
Goodbye, Antoura by Karnig Panian. A memoir of an Armenian boy's survival of the Genocide through a Turkish orphanage in Lebanon. Short, direct, and unforgettable.