{"product_id":"solar-plexus-a-baku-saga-in-four-parts-by-rustam-ibragimbekov","title":"Solar Plexus: A Baku Saga in Four Parts by Rustam Ibragimbekov","description":"\u003cp\u003eSolar Plexus\u003cem\u003e is a compelling saga of family and friendship, love and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Azerbaijan’s rapidly-changing capital, Baku, as the country struggles with the transition into a post-Soviet world…\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpanning three generations and stretching from the 1940s to the 1990s, the four distinct parts that make up \u003cem\u003eSolar Plexus\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eintertwine to tell the tale of a group of friends who grew-up around the same courtyard in Baku. Each section is told from a different perspective as the friends’ passions, deceits, rivalries and disappointments play out against the shifting turmoil of those decades: from the Great Patriotic War and Stalin’s Purges, to the industrial institutes and Russification\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eof the ’50s and ’60s, through to the struggle for independence and violence of the early ’90s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lives of Alik, Marat, Lucky, Eldar and Seidzade are realised with rare insight and a superb eye for the bigger picture, but also with humour, and a recognition of life’s absurdity that recalls writers from Bulgakov to Kundera. Ibragimbekov evokes a world of passion and honour, of proud men and hot-headed women, of great tenderness and complex humanity, where “the truth is always just one of many truths.” The novel is equally a paean to the multiculturalism of Baku, and a time when a person’s worth was measured by their qualities, not whether they had been born an Azeri, Russian, Jew or Armenian – a time brought to a violent end by the war with Armenia, when friends and neighbours were suddenly turned against one another, and broad-minded inclusion gave way to an exclusive and crude nationalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pushkin House Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57266546966906,"sku":null,"price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0510\/3406\/3009\/files\/Solar-Plexus-Rustam-Ibragimbekov-Cover_1.webp?v=1789391954","url":"https:\/\/shop.pushkinhouse.org\/products\/solar-plexus-a-baku-saga-in-four-parts-by-rustam-ibragimbekov","provider":"Pushkin House Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}