Akram Aylisli – författare

The three novellas of Farewell, Aylis take place over decades of transition in a country that rather resembles modern-day Azerbaijan.In Yemen, a Soviet traveler takes an afternoon stroll and finds himself suspected of defecting to America. In Stone Dreams, an actor explores the limits of one man’s ability to live a moral life amid conditions of sociopolitical upheaval, ethnic cleansing, and petty professional intrigue. In A Fantastical Traffic Jam, those who serve the aging leader of a corrupt, oil-rich country scheme to stay alive. Farewell, Aylis, a new essay by the author that reflects on the political firestorm surrounding these novellas and his current situation as a prisoner of conscience in Azerbaijan, was commissioned especially for this Academic Studies Press edition.

The three novellas of Farewell, Aylis take place over decades of transition in a country that rather resembles modern-day Azerbaijan.In Yemen, a Soviet traveler takes an afternoon stroll and finds himself suspected of defecting to America. In Stone Dreams, an actor explores the limits of one man’s ability to live a moral life amid conditions of sociopolitical upheaval, ethnic cleansing, and petty professional intrigue. In A Fantastical Traffic Jam, those who serve the aging leader of a corrupt, oil-rich country scheme to stay alive. Farewell, Aylis, a new essay by the author that reflects on the political firestorm surrounding these novellas and his current situation as a prisoner of conscience in Azerbaijan, was commissioned especially for this Academic Studies Press edition.

Amid ethnic violence, political corruption, and petty professionalintrigue, an artist tries to live free of lies.Set during the last years of the Soviet Union, StoneDreams tells the story of Azerbaijani actor Sadai Sadygly, who landsin a Baku hospital while trying to protect an elderly Armenian man from a gangof young Azerbaijanis. Something of a modern-day Don Quixote, Sadai has longbattled the hatred and corruption he observes in contemporary Azerbaijanisociety. Wandering in and out of consciousness, he revisits his hometown, theancient village of Aylis, where Christian Armenians and Muslim Azeris oncelived peacefully together, and dreams of making a pilgrimage of atonement toArmenia. Stone Dreams is a searing, painful meditation onthe ability of art and artists—of individual human beings—to make change in theworld.

Akram Aylisli’s People and Trees is the first major work in a long, illustrious literary career by the only contemporary writer from Azerbaijan to occupy a significant place on the world stage. Told in the voice of the young Muslim boy Sadykh, the three linked novellas and a related short story that make up People and Trees explore village life in the mountains of Azerbaijan before, during, and just after World War II. During this period, Soviet authority has been transforming traditional Azeri society, converting private land to communal agriculture and bulldozing mosques to build local “palaces of culture.” Aylisli’s young narrator fantasizes about striding into the bright socialist future he’s seen on the movie screen, hand-in-hand with a beautiful girl, as his ne’er-do-well uncle whines about the land his family worked for generations, expropriated now by the Soviet state to be part of the local collective farm.