Blog Archives
The Collapse of Political Power
The Quarry follows two powerful men building empires in a Soviet quarry town, exploring the intertwined lives of thieves, villagers, and families caught between criminal codes and collapsing political power. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
A novel is a bridge born in the writer’s imagination, thrown from the past into the future. It is the expression of the time lived. What happens in Azerbaijan is a reflection of what happens on the Absheron Peninsula and in Baku. When you look at the country’s hundred-year history, you witness this clearly. This is not a crime novel. Through the confrontation of two families and their ruthless struggle, the book portrays the collapse of political power, the fall of the Russian-Soviet Empire, and the decline of a colony.
Sani Absheronski and Malikajdar represent two kinds of power. How did you build their contrast?
I wrote about real events. The characters in the novel are not fictional out of nowhere; each has a prototype. To express their contrasts, I turned to Zoroastrianism. Let me tell you that in the lands where we once lived, Zoroastrian thought once prevailed. The god of evil was Ahriman, and the god of good was Hormuzd. There was an eternal struggle between these two deities. In my novel, Sani represents evil, while Malikajdar represents good. They gathered around themselves individuals aligned with their own nature. This creates diversity, dynamism, and strong contrasts within the events.
The novel explores loyalty in complex ways. What does loyalty mean in this world?
The foundation of humanity rests on loyalty. In society, in families, among people, between states, in religion, in science—even in the animal world—loyalty holds great importance. When wolves or dolphins lose their mate, they do not approach another. When a marriage contract is made, a vow of loyalty is given before God. When friends make a pact, loyalty is spoken of. Agreements between states are a demand for loyalty. If there is loyalty, there is humanity. If there is none, there is no humanity.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
The novel I recently completed is titled “At the Fortieth Latitude.” It discusses the collapse of the Soviet Empire, economic hardships, the freedom movement, chaos, youth unemployment in the country, emigration abroad, love and regret, and loyalty. It also speaks about the abilities of our young people who realize themselves abroad.
I am thinking about two more novels. But since their outlines are not yet drawn and they are still in an amorphous state, I cannot speak about them yet. God willing, we will complete them.
The Quarry
The Quarry is a literary historical crime novel set around an Absheron stone quarry and the shifting criminal and political world of late Soviet Azerbaijan. It follows the rise and decline of Sani Absheronski, a legendary “thief in law,” and his uneasy rivalry with Malikajdar, the village “Aga” who builds an empire on fish, flowers, and quiet deals with generals. Around them orbit people like disabled ex dancer Maria, her sharp granddaughter Samaya, and Malikajdar’s son Hatam, whose secret love affair ties the families together. The story moves from the 1950s settlement days, through prison intrigues and black market schemes, to a violent tangle of betrayals that ends in Sani’s murder and the silence of Black January settling over Baku.
I felt like I was being let into a long, layered village conversation, where one story leads into another, and nobody ever starts at the real beginning. The writing has that oral, “come closer, let me tell you” feeling, especially in Maria’s long confession about the war, exile, and how she ended up in the quarry and in Sani’s bed. I sometimes got a bit lost in the flood of names and nicknames, and the translation keeps some awkward turns of phrase, but it also preserves the local flavor, the mix of Azerbaijani, Russian, and Tatar criminal slang. The novel is most alive when people are talking around a table, passing tea and money and half truths. As a literary historical crime novel, it moves more by memory and gossip than by big set-piece scenes, which makes the world feel lived in, even when the timeline slips, and I had to mentally backtrack.
I liked how the book keeps rubbing together the sacred and the dirty. Malikajdar runs a sanctuary and hires boats, bribes a general and still worries about who gets his blessing. Maria loses her legs to the saws of the quarry and then drags herself from shrine to shrine, trying to bargain with God for a different ending to her life. Samaya holds up the whole fragile family and still gets pulled into an affair that can only hurt her. The author keeps asking small, human questions inside big historical ones. What does loyalty look like when your “brothers” are criminals. How far can kindness go in a corrupt system before it breaks. By the time Sani is shot by a man calling him “brother,” and the crash and the roar of military planes fade into the bloody quiet of Black January, the metaphor is not subtle, but it is effective. Personal feuds feel tiny against the weight of tanks, yet the book insists they matter.
The Quarry is not a sleek thriller, and if you want a fast, twisty crime plot, this will probably feel slow and heavy. But if you are up for a grounded, talkative, sometimes messy literary historical crime novel that opens a window on late Soviet Azerbaijani life, with all its compromises and quiet courage, The Quarry is worth the time. I would especially recommend it to readers who enjoy character-focused sagas, who do not mind following a big cast across decades, and to anyone curious about how crime, family, and politics get tangled together on the margins of empire.
Pages: 229 | ASIN : B0882YSFVB
