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Azerbaijan Tales
Land of liminality and the illusions of the east, of flammiferous spirituality and earth-spewn fires, caught within the claw of communism. The Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan. Spectral retribution for attempted unmentionable sin in the Old City of Baku; the horror of a millennial burial pit in an abandoned church; sub-human linkages from dead aeons that brood beneath a mountain cave near Iran: offering apotropaic transmutations of carnality into a vehicle for redemption - but not always.
Azerbaijan Tales comprises three decadent novellas by an imaginative author of the wandering macabre. Two are new and previously unpublished while an earlier incarnation of the third appeared as a rare, very limited edition.
The contents are as follows:
Matinee in Baku
The Pit Crypts of Kish
The Sanatorium at Chakhirshirincelo
This is a lithographically printed, limited edition of 260 copies with colour endpapers.
Azerbaijan Tales comprises three decadent novellas by an imaginative author of the wandering macabre. Two are new and previously unpublished while an earlier incarnation of the third appeared as a rare, very limited edition.
The contents are as follows:
Matinee in Baku
The Pit Crypts of Kish
The Sanatorium at Chakhirshirincelo
This is a lithographically printed, limited edition of 260 copies with colour endpapers.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published July 17, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 14, 2024
A bizarre collection. The author's prose is dense, arch, and thickly stylized, brimming with intense detail, amusing alliterations, tortured syntax, didactic repetitions, and the frequent use of archaic words. A lugubrious tone is deployed in all three of these glacially-paced pieces, despite the occasional flashes of grim or sardonic humor. Albert Power is a highly original and challenging writer. These novellas felt like they were written by Charon, or the librarian in charge of antiquities deep in Hades' library. I'm unsure if I've read the likes of this before. Not for amateurs!
"Matinee in Baku"
Elderly retired actress-turned-civil servant Marinitsa Yurebian is interviewed by an Irish monk sent to investigate the life of a former colleague - once a Catholic priest, next taking on the identity of a slain Azeri soldier, then a Soviet liaison, now missing. As the novella travels back in time to recount a key incident from Marinitsa's childhood, the story moves from her perspective to the perspective of a theater producer to her actress mother to the loathsome former priest - a handsome serial molester and occasional gangrapist scheming to add the child to his list of accomplishments. This is an often horrifying, always fascinating tale involving atrocities in the former Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the production of Horace Walpole's obscure play "The Mysterious Mother" (a gothic tragedy involving incest, priestly evil, and hidden identities), a strange occurrence during a matinee performance, and what appears to be divine intervention and a grim supernatural justice. I loved it all, from the prose that requires time and patience to understand, to the onion-like layers of the plot, to the rich and realistic characterization, to the outré denouement.
"The Pit-Crypts of Kish"
Despite a title that appears to promise charnel terrors familiar to readers of Weird Fiction and straightforward horror alike, this novella is neither horror nor especially weird. Well, life in paranoid 1969 Azerbaijan while under the thumb of Soviet diktats does sound both horrible and weird. "Pit-Crypts" is about a middle-aged schoolteacher's ill-fated attachment to an archeological dig, where she hopes to find proof of a prior Christian regime preceding the worship of Islam, which itself has been supplanted by atheist, anti-religious Soviet rule. The story is a melancholy one, as Anush contemplates God, worship, and Christianity itself, her relationship with an abusive partner who found himself at the wrong end of Soviet rifles, and her feeling that her life has been a wasted one. Into this mournful narrative come a repulsive apparatchik intent on ravishment, a young and sympathetic student, and a pit located at an abandoned Christian church - a pit which will be the final resting place for one of these three characters. This was a thoughtful, depressing, and very immersive experience.
"The Sanatorium at Chakhirshirincelo"
Lovely young pharmaceutical assistant Tahira Karayeva is being held in the titular institute following a mysterious episode touring the tunnels beneath a nearby mountain. The passive, fearful, and perhaps deranged Tahira casts a strange spell of attraction: on the beastly laborer who stalks her lunch breaks back at the pharmacy, on an elegant lesbian interrogator, on the portly and middle-aged director of the sanitorium itself. But what happened to that small party touring those tunnels? Five went in, three came out: one killed herself, another - the laborer - was found dead, a third fell deeply in love with Tahira, and Tahira herself resurfaced with a bloodied mouth, as if caught mid-mastication, of a dish served very rare. The fifth has promised the tunnels as a getaway from Soviet Azerbaijan for the sanitorium director and his beloved Tahira, who has a secret love of her own, that only she can see. There are legends about those tunnels: terrible sacrifices once made, grisly meals enjoyed. Perhaps a shadow from that distant past has been cast on the present, on Tahira herself? The reader is given no answers, but much to consider.
"Matinee in Baku"
Elderly retired actress-turned-civil servant Marinitsa Yurebian is interviewed by an Irish monk sent to investigate the life of a former colleague - once a Catholic priest, next taking on the identity of a slain Azeri soldier, then a Soviet liaison, now missing. As the novella travels back in time to recount a key incident from Marinitsa's childhood, the story moves from her perspective to the perspective of a theater producer to her actress mother to the loathsome former priest - a handsome serial molester and occasional gangrapist scheming to add the child to his list of accomplishments. This is an often horrifying, always fascinating tale involving atrocities in the former Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the production of Horace Walpole's obscure play "The Mysterious Mother" (a gothic tragedy involving incest, priestly evil, and hidden identities), a strange occurrence during a matinee performance, and what appears to be divine intervention and a grim supernatural justice. I loved it all, from the prose that requires time and patience to understand, to the onion-like layers of the plot, to the rich and realistic characterization, to the outré denouement.
"The Pit-Crypts of Kish"
Despite a title that appears to promise charnel terrors familiar to readers of Weird Fiction and straightforward horror alike, this novella is neither horror nor especially weird. Well, life in paranoid 1969 Azerbaijan while under the thumb of Soviet diktats does sound both horrible and weird. "Pit-Crypts" is about a middle-aged schoolteacher's ill-fated attachment to an archeological dig, where she hopes to find proof of a prior Christian regime preceding the worship of Islam, which itself has been supplanted by atheist, anti-religious Soviet rule. The story is a melancholy one, as Anush contemplates God, worship, and Christianity itself, her relationship with an abusive partner who found himself at the wrong end of Soviet rifles, and her feeling that her life has been a wasted one. Into this mournful narrative come a repulsive apparatchik intent on ravishment, a young and sympathetic student, and a pit located at an abandoned Christian church - a pit which will be the final resting place for one of these three characters. This was a thoughtful, depressing, and very immersive experience.
"The Sanatorium at Chakhirshirincelo"
Lovely young pharmaceutical assistant Tahira Karayeva is being held in the titular institute following a mysterious episode touring the tunnels beneath a nearby mountain. The passive, fearful, and perhaps deranged Tahira casts a strange spell of attraction: on the beastly laborer who stalks her lunch breaks back at the pharmacy, on an elegant lesbian interrogator, on the portly and middle-aged director of the sanitorium itself. But what happened to that small party touring those tunnels? Five went in, three came out: one killed herself, another - the laborer - was found dead, a third fell deeply in love with Tahira, and Tahira herself resurfaced with a bloodied mouth, as if caught mid-mastication, of a dish served very rare. The fifth has promised the tunnels as a getaway from Soviet Azerbaijan for the sanitorium director and his beloved Tahira, who has a secret love of her own, that only she can see. There are legends about those tunnels: terrible sacrifices once made, grisly meals enjoyed. Perhaps a shadow from that distant past has been cast on the present, on Tahira herself? The reader is given no answers, but much to consider.
December 9, 2022
Power, Albert - Azerbaijan Tales
Three novellas, set in Azerbaijan during Soviet control.
“Matinee In Baku” luncheons with a forgotten film star, waiting in a word-of-mouth popular cafe. In walks an older man, scruffy, yet charged with a probing intensity. He soon rakes the slumbering embers of memory. Secrets from the actress’s past; also secrets of her own mother, an even more legendary actress.
Buried business, ugly business. One wants suppressed, another wants excavated.
“The Pit-Crypts Of Kish” carries ripples of the first story. A minor character from “Matinee” is part of an archeological dig at Qabala, along with three men, and a party apparatchik.
Faith and history run parallel, if unevenly.
The ending felt not so much unresolved as unfinished, with several shingles of narrative tacked on in a concluding act. I was dissatisfied.
“The Sanatorium At Chakhirshirincelo” makes for a murky finale, yet compelling and fulfilling.
The director of the institute wonders if he can release an inmate, accused of murder, back to her hometown. To help him decide, another apparatchik arrives.
Different voices, conflicting agendas, diverse recollections, all muddy the waters. Not one unreliable narrator, but a handful, force the reader to grope in darkness.
Power has a sure hand throughout, sitting us inside the director’s office, then drawing us deeper and deeper, down and down, into a labyrinth of underground passages, heavy with ancestral memory.
As a bonus, there is also a poem, of which I will not elaborate. This feels like a window, cracked open by the author, providing, ever so slightly, a glimpse of the muse.
Three novellas, set in Azerbaijan during Soviet control.
“Matinee In Baku” luncheons with a forgotten film star, waiting in a word-of-mouth popular cafe. In walks an older man, scruffy, yet charged with a probing intensity. He soon rakes the slumbering embers of memory. Secrets from the actress’s past; also secrets of her own mother, an even more legendary actress.
Buried business, ugly business. One wants suppressed, another wants excavated.
“The Pit-Crypts Of Kish” carries ripples of the first story. A minor character from “Matinee” is part of an archeological dig at Qabala, along with three men, and a party apparatchik.
Faith and history run parallel, if unevenly.
The ending felt not so much unresolved as unfinished, with several shingles of narrative tacked on in a concluding act. I was dissatisfied.
“The Sanatorium At Chakhirshirincelo” makes for a murky finale, yet compelling and fulfilling.
The director of the institute wonders if he can release an inmate, accused of murder, back to her hometown. To help him decide, another apparatchik arrives.
Different voices, conflicting agendas, diverse recollections, all muddy the waters. Not one unreliable narrator, but a handful, force the reader to grope in darkness.
Power has a sure hand throughout, sitting us inside the director’s office, then drawing us deeper and deeper, down and down, into a labyrinth of underground passages, heavy with ancestral memory.
As a bonus, there is also a poem, of which I will not elaborate. This feels like a window, cracked open by the author, providing, ever so slightly, a glimpse of the muse.
February 12, 2025
There are very few authors that I get more pleasure from reading than Mr Power.
Singular tales rich in detail and colour; a captivating eye for the unusual; an inimitable turn of phrase that transcends the ordinary.
This collection, comprising 3 novellas and a poem, is no exception. These are stories to savour and appreciate.
Beautifully presented by Egaeus Press, I can highly recommend it.
"For the first time in nearly thirty years she saw it again; she saw again that which she had wanted never again to see; that handsome face, slender and spectre-pale, glimmering in intensity of its beauty, framed by an aureole of dark brown hair, if in memory it had been streaked somewhat with snaking threads of grey; saw what she had kept at bay for almost three full decades by now; those pallid perfect features and those cold blue eyes that held the calculating glitter of a saurian stare; the mesmerisingly lovely face of........"
- from Matinee In Baku.
Singular tales rich in detail and colour; a captivating eye for the unusual; an inimitable turn of phrase that transcends the ordinary.
This collection, comprising 3 novellas and a poem, is no exception. These are stories to savour and appreciate.
Beautifully presented by Egaeus Press, I can highly recommend it.
"For the first time in nearly thirty years she saw it again; she saw again that which she had wanted never again to see; that handsome face, slender and spectre-pale, glimmering in intensity of its beauty, framed by an aureole of dark brown hair, if in memory it had been streaked somewhat with snaking threads of grey; saw what she had kept at bay for almost three full decades by now; those pallid perfect features and those cold blue eyes that held the calculating glitter of a saurian stare; the mesmerisingly lovely face of........"
- from Matinee In Baku.
December 1, 2022
Quite overwritten, such that it made for a tedious read. I had a hard time not skimming and not drifting, and because of this, unfortunately, the stories were lost on me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews