Originally published in Germany in 1933, this book has been credited with awakening the world to the genocide inflicted on the Armenian nation during the First World War. Many contemporaries also saw parallels between the events of the book and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in the early 1930s.
Werfel himself fled to the United States via France and Portugal after the Anschluss, becoming part of an emigre milieu which included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann. All three had their books burned by the Nazis.
