Zabel Yesayan, born in 1878 in Üsküdar, went to Paris after school and was the first Armenian student at the Sorbonne, later becoming a celebrated author in Istanbul. In 1915, she was the only woman on the list of Armenian intellectuals and politicians from Istanbul who were to be deported. Yesayan escaped this deportation and thus the genocide and led an eventful life in Bucharest, Paris, Baku and Yerevan as a committed writer and activist. She was arrested during the Stalin era and died in 1942/43 under unexplained circumstances.
