I Ask You, Ladies and Gentlemen Apples of Immortality: Folktales of Armenia Daredevils of Sassoun Leon Zaven Surmelian (Armenian: Լեւոն Զաւէն Սիւրմէլեան; November 24, 1905 – October 3, 1995) was an Armenian-American writer.

[5] In 1924, Surmelian collected his various poems and published his first and only Armenian work, Joyous Light (Lus Zvart), in Paris, France.

[2] In 1945, Surmelian published I Ask You, Ladies and Gentlemen, an autobiography of his life during the Armenian Genocide in English which would later be translated into Italian, Swedish, Czech, and Turkish.

[4] Both Apples of Immortality and Daredevils of Sassoun are considered to be important pieces of the Armenian people's literary works and are included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

[6] Whilst working on Apples of Immortality and Daredevils of Sassoun, Surmelian was simultaneously lecturing at the University of Southern California and continued to do so until 1969.

[5] Surmelian's autobiography on the Armenian Genocide and first work in English, I Ask You, Ladies and Gentlemen, was also praised internationally and was eventually translated into multiple languages after its initial publication in 1945.

Apples of Immortality, published by the University of California Press in 1968, presented 40 Armenian folktales that, according to Surmelian, "only needed a little trimming and stitching" to make the book comprehensible to the non-Armenian.

[1] Noubar Aghishian, a fellow Armenian-American author living in California, defended Surmelian's choice to not write in his mother tongue, asking his audience "who even reads Armenian books today?

[1] For his mixed depiction of Armenian women in Daredevils of Sassoun, Greek critic Kyriacos Hadjioannou argued that Surmelian had a subtle Muslim influence in his writings.

[12] Surmelian himself says that Austrian-Bohemian author Franz Werfel and fellow Armenian-American writer William Saroyan inspired him to tell the Armenian story in a different language.