Book Description
Black Garden is the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, got sucked into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, bringing to an end the Soviet Union, and plaguing a region of great strategic importance. It cuts between a careful reconstruction of the history of Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting on its convoluted aftermath. Part contemporary history, part travel book, part political analysis, the book is based on six months traveling through the south Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews in the region, Moscow, and Washington, and unique primary sources, such as Politboro archives. The historical chapters trace how the conflict lay unresolved in the Soviet era; how Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders exacerbated it; how the Politiboro failed to cope with the crisis; how the war began and ended; how the international community failed to sort out the conflict. What emerges is a complex and subtle portrait of a beautiful and fascinating region, blighted by historical prejudice and conflict.
Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In the beautiful hills of the Caucasus, Armenia and Azerbaijan are still locked in a quarrel that has blighted the entire region between Russia and Iran, the Black and the Caspian Seas. The dispute over Nagorny Karabakh made the first tears in the fabric of Gorbachev's Soviet Union in 1988 and so can lay claim to ending the Soviet empire. In 1991-94 it became the first interstate war in the former USSR, leading to twenty thousand deaths and one of the biggest refugee flows of modern times, with more than a million people still displaced from their homes." In Black Garden, Thomas de Waal tells the full story of this tragic quarrel and its aftermath for the first time. He travels the length and breadth of Armenia and Azerbaijan, talking to veterans, refugees and the inhabitants of ruined towns and villages. He recreates the story of the descent into conflict of two former Soviet neighbors, its disastrous consequences and the confused efforts of the "Great Powers" - Russia, France and the United states - to bring peace to the Caucasus.
FROM THE CRITICS
Foreign Affairs
Of the half dozen violent conflicts that erupted during the disintegration of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the most complicated and intractable has been the Azerbaijani-Armenian dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Never have all the twists and turns, sad carnage, and bullheadedness on all sides been better described — or, indeed, better explained, for de Waal, by deftly combining history with carefully assembled on-the-ground detail, offers a deeper and more compelling account of the conflict than anyone before. He ferrets out critical material from an amazingly diverse set of interviews and assembles the story in a calm, firm, utterly fair-minded fashion, one likely to exercise give-no-quarters partisans on both sides.
Art & Photography
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