Khachik Dashtents

Khachik Dashtents (; May 25, 1910 – March 9, 1974) was a Soviet Armenian writer, poet and translator.

Dashtents was born in the Ottoman Empire and was orphaned during the Armenian genocide. He grew up in American orphanages in Alexandropol (modern-day Gyumri, Armenia) and later graduated from Yerevan State University and the Moscow State Linguistic University, where he studied English. He began his literary career in the 1930s as a poet. Over the course of his career, he translated many works from English into Armenian, including numerous plays by William Shakespeare. He gained recognition for the novel Khodedan (1950), which tells the story of Armenians from his native region of Sasun as they rebuild their lives following the Armenian genocide. His other novel, Ranchparneri kanche (The call of the plowmen, 1979), is about the Armenian national liberation movement in the Ottoman Empire. He also authored Tigran Mets (Tigranes the Great, 1947), a historical tragedy in verse.

Biography Khachik Dashtents, whose birth name was Khachik Avetisyan, was born into a shepherd's family on May 25, 1910, in Dashtadem, a village in the historical region of Sasun in the Bitlis vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He later adopted the pen name Dashtents, based on the name of his native village (and in imitation of the poet Yeghishe Charents). and received refuge and education from American humanitarian organizations in Alexandropol (modern-day Gyumri, Armenia). He briefly worked as a village teacher, then moved to Yerevan. He graduated from Yerevan State University in 1932 and then worked for the newspaper Avangard. That same year, he published his first collection of poems, titled (Book of songs), with the help of Yeghishe Charents. In 1947, Dashtents published Tigran Mets (Tigranes the Great), a historical tragedy in verse. He gained widespread recognition for the novel Khodedan, which tells the tragic story of Western Armenians during World War I. It follows Armenians from Sasun as they rebuild their lives following the genocide. This work is about the Armenian national liberation movement in the Ottoman Empire.