People and Trees
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€23.99
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.
Akram Aylisli is an Azerbaijani novelist, playwright, and editor. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages. Publications in English include “Farewell, Aylis,” a trilogy of novellas that includes the controversial “Stone Dreams.” “Stone Dreams” explores themes of understanding and mutual accountability among Azerbaijanis and Armenians; its publication in 2012 led to public burnings of Aylisli’s books in Azerbaijan. Since 2016, Aylisli has been the target of a politically motivated criminal investigation by the Azerbaijani government that imposes significant restrictions on all his activities; he lives under de facto house arrest in Baku, Azerbaijan. Katherine E. Young is the author of the poetry collections “Woman Drinking Absinthe” and “Day of the Border Guards” (2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist) and the editor of “Written in Arlington.” She has translated work by Anna Starobinets (memoir), Akram Aylisli (fiction), and numerous Russian-language poets from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. Awards include the Granum Foundation Translation Prize, the Pushkin House Translation Residency, an Arlington County (Virginia) Individual Artist Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship, and a Hawthornden fellowship (Scotland). From 2016-2018, she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia.