Akram Aylisli

Akram Najaf oglu Naibov (Əkrəm Nəcəf oğlu Naibov, born December 6, 1937), better known by his pen name Akram Aylisli, is an Azerbaijani writer, playwright, novelist and former member of parliament.

His works have been translated from his native Azerbaijani into a number of languages in the former Soviet Union and around the world.

Aylisli was born in the village of Aylis in 1937 in the Ordubad region of the Nakhchivan, part of Soviet Azerbaijan, near the borders of Armenia and Iran.

His mother, Leya Ali Kyzy, was the village storyteller, his father died at WWII when Akram was five.

His youth in the Soviet Union coincided with one of its more liberal periods: the years of de-Stalinization and the 'Thaw' under the flamboyant leadership of Nikita Khrushchev.

Aylisli received his graduate education at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow, the elite school of creative writing for Soviet writers.

His first work, a poem entitled "Qeşem ve onun Kürekeni", was published in the journal Azerbaycan.

During Soviet times Aylisli was a poet, translator, and playwright, and he authored a number of novels: "Trees without Shade", "Shining of the six suns", "The season of colorful dresses", "The white canyon", "The dam", "Peoples and Trees" and others.

Most of Aylisli's works are associated with this native village.

Aylisli's stories and novels, so subtle and full of affection for peasant life, are very popular in Azerbaijan and Soviet Union.

His novel "Peoples and Trees" have been translated into more than thirty languages and published beyond Soviet borders in the countries of Eastern Europe.

Сonceptually and personally Aylisli was close to the Russian "Village Prose" movement.

Aylisli was also the author of a number of dramas and plays, including "Quşu Uçan Budaqlar", "Menim Neğmekar Bibim", "Bağdada Putyovka Var", and "Vezife", which were staged and shown in theaters in Baku, Nakhchivan, Ganja, and Yerevan.

Moreover, Aylisli worked as a translator.

He translated into Azeri the books by Gabriel García Márquez, Heinrich Böll, Ivan Turgenev, Konstantin Paustovsky, Vladimir Korolenko, Anton Chekhov, Vasily Shukshin, Chinghiz Aitmatov, Salman Rushdie.

From 1968–70, he became the editor-in-chief of "Gençlik", and later worked as a satirist for the journal Mozalan.

From 1974–78, he served on the Azerbaijan SSR's State Committee for Cinematography.

Aylisli was awarded the title of "People's Writer" as well as the highest state awards of Azerbaijan – the medals of "Shokhrat" ("Honor") and "Istiglal" ("Independence").

It covers the pogroms of Armenians in Baku in 1989 and the massacre of Armenians in his native village by Turkish troops in 1919.

The scenes of the recent past and the tales of old people about the Armenian massacre intertwined in the novel.

His works published in the Soviet Union did not conform to socialist realism, than some other writers of the Azerbaijan SSR at that time, and he spoke negatively about the Soviet era for a while in 1990s.

In one of his recent interviews broadcast on television channel ANS TV he stated that he believes that Karl Marx was a genius, and the world will come to his ideas sooner or later.

Many in Azerbaijan took offense to Aylisli's sympathetic portrayal of Armenians, with whom they fought and lost a six-year-long conflict over control of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s.

The novella stirred resentment by depicting only the Azerbaijani brutality against Armenians during the conflict, while never mentioning incidents of alleged Armenian violence against Azerbaijanis such as the Khojaly massacre.

There are some other controversial aspects to the novel.

He was decorated by the President of Azerbaijan with the prestigious "Istiglal" (2002) and "Shokhrat" orders.

In November 2005, he was elected to the National Assembly of Azerbaijan (Milli Majlis) as a member of parliament representing his constituency in Julfa-Ordubad.

The original book was written in 2006 in Azerbaijani language but the author postponed the publication because he did not like the translation into Russian, which later performed by himself.

The Original book in Azerbaijani has never been published ever since.

The novel tells the story of the Azerbaijani actor Saday Sadykhly and his efforts to protect his Armenian neighbors during the Sumgait and Baku Pogroms in the closing years of the Soviet Union.

The novel begins as the severely beaten Sadykhly is being transported to the hospital: while trying to protect his Armenian neighbor he was also assaulted by the yeraz [Azeri refugees from Armenia] on the streets of Baku, who mistook him too for an Armenian.

There are four main characters in the novel.

Sadai Sadykhly, his friend Nunavrish Karabahly, also an actor, Sadykhly's father in law Professor of psychiatry, Dr. Abbasaliev and a surgeon in the hospital where Sadykhly was taken right after assault Dr. Farid Farzaneh.

Although it looks like that Sadykhly was recovering at the beginning, by the end his body couldn't sustain the physical injuries or the nervous pressure, and so he died.

He served for one term, which ended on November 7, 2010.

Aylisli generally is supportive of left wing views.

In late 2012 and early 2013, Aylisli found himself embroiled in controversy when his novella, Daş yuxular (Stone Dreams), was published in a Russian-language journal called Druzhba Narodov (Friendship of the Peoples).

In 2013, after the publication of Aylisli's Stone Dreams novella, which depicted the pogroms carried out by Azerbaijanis against the Armenians in Sumgait and Baku and presented Armenians in sympathetic light, President Aliyev signed a presidential decree that stripped Aylisli of the title of "People's Writer" and the presidential pension.

His books were burnt by Azerbaijani intelligentsia and compatriots in his hometown, his son and wife were fired from their jobs and a "bounty" of some $13,000 was promised for cutting the writer's ear off.

In March 2014, a formal request was made by various public figures throughout the world to nominate Aylisli for the Nobel Peace Prize.