Cracking the shell: Robert Apelian on ‘Fustuk: A Graphic Novel’

2026-01-27 - 19:32

On Jan. 20, 2026, Penguin Workshop published Fustuk: A Graphic Novel by Armenian American author-illustrator Robert Mgrdich Apelian, who weaves multiple timelines into an inventive, fantastical story of Armenian family, food and diasporic culture. When I had the chance to get into the mind behind such a unique genre, I jumped at it! With Armenian-themed children’s and young adult books increasingly reaching mass markets, a graphic novel fills a gap, appealing to readers across age groups. “I wanted to make the book I always wanted about Armenian-ness,” Apelian explains. “But also be an ambassador. I want non-Armenians to love it just as much.” Apelian has always been immersed in comics. “I have a big shelf of manga and comics behind me. It’s most of what I read,” he says. “As a child, he drew constantly and made up stories, but creativity took a back seat to practicality. He worked full time as a software engineer and “wasn’t really entertaining art for a while.” That changed around 2017. “I think I just kind of burnt out and wanted to do something more creatively fulfilling,” Apelian reflects. “I started like, okay, I’m going to try making a graphic novel.” What began as a personal experiment became Fustuk, a richly detailed graphic novel steeped in Armenian diasporan identity, food, memory and myth. He began practicing art regularly, showing his work locally and slowly building his skills. At the same time, he was developing the idea that would eventually become Fustuk. Then came 2020. “During the pandemic, I got furloughed from my job and was able to spend that time really working full time on it,” he explains. “I was able to put together a pitch that I thought would actually get sold. And it did!” The publishing journey unfolded unexpectedly. Apelian initially pitched the project to someone he believed was an agent. “I accidentally pitched to an editor at a different publisher. I thought they were an agent,” he says, laughing. “They accepted. We talked for a bit. They gave me an offer.” “I think food is something that really connects with people,” Apelian says. “People love reading about cooking and seeing food. It’s really good for the visual medium of comics, where you can see dishes.” He also credits his strength as a plotter: “The macroscopic part of writing is easy for me. I like weaving things together into one well-conceived, tight package. I think the high-level outline pitched pretty well.” The author-illustrator notes that “there aren’t a lot of stories about Armenians and the Middle East [like this].” For Apelian, it was personal. “It had the visual style, and this sort of lines-heavy, detailed art is less common in indie graphic novels.” At the heart of Fustuk is a deeply personal exploration of Armenian diasporan identity — one Apelian knows intimately. “I didn’t grow up speaking Armenian or going to Armenian events,” he explains. “My only connection to my heritage was my family.” His parents’ generation leaned toward assimilation: “Go to school, get the best job, be as successful as possible.” It wasn’t until college, when Apelian joined an Armenian club in Boston, that he encountered vastly different relationships to Armenian culture. “I saw so many more Armenians and such a different relationship with the culture,” he says. “That’s when I really started to think about identity.” Those tensions appear directly in Fustuk. “The two older siblings in the book represent those viewpoints,” Apelian points out, while the main character, Katah, navigates “how to get what he wants out of identity and do the best thing for himself, his family and the culture.” Now, as Apelian prepares to become a father himself, those questions feel even more urgent. “My worry is: is my kid going to grow up with even less attachment to Armenian identity?” he asks. “How do I live the way I want to live but still preserve the identity and pass it on?” Although Apelian never knew genocide survivors directly, the weight of inherited memory shaped his storytelling. “My grandfather had so many stories,” he says. “He’s from Kessab (Syria), so he carried all these things from a different world for me.” Like many in the diaspora, Apelian admits he wasn’t always interested. “When I was younger, I didn’t care. My grandparents tried to teach us Armenian and we were, like, whatever,” he recalls. “It was only when I got older that I was like, oh man, I wish they had forced me.” Before his grandfather passed away, Apelian recorded hours of conversations with him. “What I’m creating is more fantastical and fictionalized,” he says, “but it’s the themes and the feelings I want to pass on.” “I love stories with multiple timelines weaving in and out,” Apelian explains. “Secrets become unearthed at the climax — what really happened, what’s at the core of your beliefs, what you went through that made you this way.” Food anchors Fustuk both narratively and symbolically. The Armenian dishes in the book come directly from Apelian’s family, whose roots trace back to Kessab and Beirut. “Kufte, kibbeh are iconically Armenian. Knafeh was a special breakfast at my grandparents’ house. Madzoon abour was a favorite.” Persian food, by contrast, was included intentionally as a cultural counterpoint. “Arab and Armenian food are too meshed together for me,” Apelian explains. “Persian food has its own identity.” The title itself emerged almost accidentally. Apelian originally created a naming system based on pistachio varieties, but he later realized many were named after places in Iran. “That idea wasn’t so good,” he admits. “But the Fustuk name stuck.” Over time, it gained deeper meaning. “There’s something metaphorical about a pistachio,” he reflects. “You have to crack open the shell to get to the meat.” Visually, Fustuk draws heavily from Armenian ornamental art, rugs, platters and scripts. Apelian immersed himself in research, including Armenian texts on symbolic ornamentation. “The more I researched, the more meaning I found in symbols,” he says. “I wanted to embed as much meaning as possible.” Sound effects appear in Armenian and Persian scripts, a deliberate choice inspired by manga. “The visuals are more important than the actual sound,” Apelian says. “And the Armenian alphabet is a source of pride for us.” Balancing dense art with readable text was a learning curve. “I filled the panels with everything at first,” he admits. “There was no room for speech bubbles. I had to learn to condense.” The book took five years to make, something Apelian finds both gratifying and painful. “Most people are going to read it in an hour or less,” he says. “That’s tragic to me.” So, he built in layers. “I wanted re-readability for the things you’ll notice on the second or third pass.” Before his professional debut, Apelian had contributed illustrations to the Armenian Weekly. In 2019, the newspaper introduced a cartoon panel called Dispersed, describing it as a project to “bring a ‘funnies’ section to our newspaper” and make the reading experience more colorful. The panel focused on the diasporan-Armenian experience, giving Apelian an early platform to experiment with visual storytelling. As he enters a year marked by both a first book and a first child, Apelian stands at the beginning of what he calls “a whole new era.” And like the pistachio at the center of his story, Fustuk invites readers to crack the shell to uncover memory, meaning and what lies within. Fustuk is available wherever great books are sold. For information on Apelian’s book tour, check out his Instagram Linktree.