The Modern Novel

Biography

Ivan Kakovitch was born in 1933 in Kiev, just a few months after the Simele Massacre, where numerous Assyrians were killed in Iraq. His parents moved to Kazakhstan when Ivan was five, before moving to Tehran six years later. He studied in France when he was twenty-three and, three years later, moved to Washington D.C. where he worked for the Berlitz School of Languages and Voice of America. He ran his own school of languages in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to Washington. He became more active in Assyrian issues and wrote the Assyrian Manifesto. He founded the International Confederation of Assyrian Nation (ICAN) but it closed a few months later, due to lack of financial support. He moved to California, where he wrote his novel Mount Semele about the Simele massacre. He died suddenly in Paris in 2006.

Other links

Ivan Kakovitch
Ivan’s Unofficial Biography