The Stone Dreams scandal: the Nagorny Karabakh conflict and Armenian-Azerbaijani relations in contemporary literature

Abstract

This article analyses the scandal that broke out in Azerbaijan after the publication of Stone Dreams, a novel by Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli. Stone Dreams depicted and condemned the persecution against the Armenian population in Baku and Sumgait in 1988-1990, as well as the early twentieth century massacre of the Armenian community in the writer’s home village, Aylis in Nakhichevan. Akram Aylisli touched on a taboo and in a context with weak civic and democratic institutions, the discussion of such traumatic events in Azerbaijan’s recent past proved unacceptable to both society and the ruling elite. This article reaches beyond contemporary debates, however, to cover earlier and less well-known works with Armenian-Azerbaijani themes such as Evgeniy Voyskunskiy’s novel Maiden Dreams, Seymur Baycan’s Gugark, Maria Martirosova’s Photos To Remember Me By and Levon Javakhian’s short story “Kirve”. These works are reviewed here in terms of how they address issues of conflict, reconciliation and responsibility. This article underscores the importance of literary works dealing with conflict, as they usually reach a much broader audience than academic books.