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|title=An Armenian Sketchbook

|sort=Armenian Sketchbook, An

|publisher=MacLehose Press

|date=July 2013

|summary=Brought back from the middle of the Soviet experiment, this travel journalism has a very personal touch from an author you may well feel like reading more of.

}}

In 1961, noted Soviet man of letters Vasily Grossman went to Armenia, for a couple of months' research and fact-finding, while he was working on transforming an Armenian novel of no small length into Russian. (You can't call it translating, as he didn't speak Armenian beyond two words – he really was paid to rewrite it to some extent in his fashion.) With time spent in the capital, Yerevan, and in other rural areas, he got an intimate flavour of the country and its people, and this book is the resulting piece. It's not really accurate to call it a travelogue, for it covers just a patch here, a topic there, and is in no correct order as such – and the author calls it a literary memoir. What you can call it, however, is a success.