Overview

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.

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9781644699133

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Reviews

Aylisli is more than a courageous figure, however; he is a masterful writer whose works transcend their Azerbaijani context…Katherine E. Young’s translation adroitly follows the stylistic twists and turns of the novel, which can move from satire to lyricism to horror within a few lines…I recommend this book to everyone—Azerbaijani literature is so little known, and Aylisli’s work is a compelling introduction. Ideal for the university, Stone Dreams would be excellent in post-Soviet studies or a Russian literature course decolonizing its curriculum. — Anna Oldfield, Coastal Carolina University, Slavic Review

Author Information

Akram Aylisli is an Azerbaijani writer, playwright,novelist, and editor. His works have been translated from his native Azeri intomore than 20 languages. The 2012 publication of his novella Stone Dreams led tobook burnings and the continuous harassment of the author himself. Since 2016he has lived under a politically motivated criminal investigation andcorresponding restrictions on his activities in Baku, Azerbaijan. Katherine E. Young is theauthor of the poetry collections Woman Drinking Absinthe and Dayof the Border Guardsand the editor of Written in ArlingtonSheis the translator of work by Anna Starobinets (memoir), Akram Aylisli (fiction),and numerous Russophone poets. Young was named a 2017 National Endowment forthe Art translation fellow. From 2016-2018, she served as the inaugural PoetLaureate for Arlington, Virginia.

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