Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic FROM THE PUBLISHER
This underground classic tells the story of oil-rich Azerbaijan's first years of independence from Moscow. Thomas Goltz became an accidental witness to Azerbaijan's inglorious history-in-the-making when he was detoured into Baku in mid-1991 - and decided to stay. This record of his years there alternates in style between tragedy and farce. Throughout, the intensity of immediate experience is balanced by an acute awareness of contemporaneous events in Karabakh and Naxjivan, Georgia and Armenia, Russia and Chechnya, Iran and Turkey, Washington and Houston.
FROM THE CRITICS
Debra Goldman
Goltz himself suggests that nonspecialist readers ignore the funny names and approach his tale as a pure adventure story from a faraway land. Take his advice and read this book. -- Brill's Content
New York Times Book Review
Goltz's account of six years as a freelance journalist in a volatile region where oil men, spies, Islamic militants, mercenaries and corrupt politicians jockey for power reads like a combination of John le Carre and Hunter S. Thompson.
Library Journal
Azerbaijan is surely among the most complex of Soviet successor states, save Russia itself. Goltz enjoys the distinction of being probably the only Western correspondent whose personal courage and linguistic skill made possible this unique witness to the country's first years of independence. He takes us from his "illegal" entry during the last phase of Soviet rule through accession of former KGB chief and Azeri President Heydar Aliyev. As sheer adventure, the account stands by itself as compelling reading, but the scholarly minded will benefit as Goltz moves from the poverty of postindependence Baku through the chaotic war involving Armenia and the "Black Garden" of Nagorno-Karabakh. Excursions to Tashkent, Teheran, and Grozny add perspective with emerging Turkish-Iranian rivalry for influence. But the book's crowning feature is the author's interviews with the republic's three presidents and the reemergence of the opposition "Popular Front" against Aliyev. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ. Erie
Booknews
The author, a journalist who covered the region in the early 1990s, relates the events that he saw in a style he refers to as "history as contact journalism." He covers the coups, the civil uprisings, the lost Karabakh war of secession, the occupation of part of Azerbaijan by Armenian troops, and the internal ethnic, religious, and political struggles that have plagued the country since independence. No references. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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