Chingiz Abdullayev: 'Once, I almost missed my train reading my book'

People's writer of the Republic of Azerbaijan tells VK about his books

The people's writer of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Secretary of the Republic's Union of Writers, the outstanding author Chingiz Abdullayev, has spoken to Vestnik Kavkaza about his life and books.

- More than twenty years have passed since you published your first book "The Blue Angels". Now you are a writer famous not only in Azerbaijan, but throughout the world. What made you leave state service and start writing books?

- I was always fond of writing books. I was writing when I was a schoolboy and a student. As a student of the Law Faculty I was an editor of the faculty's newspaper. My first book was published when my friend died abroad during a special operation, and I decided to tell the readers about such courageous people. However, the KGB didn't allow it to be published and the book was published much later.

- You have visited various different countries, you have travelled a lot. Do you think that an author who has never been abroad differs from one who has travelled much?

- I think so. The difference is in fact great. When you travel you meet new people, you enrich yourself as well as when you are reading books. It's impossible to write about Buenos-Aires if you have never been there.

- Don't you want to write a book about present-day Azerbaijan?

- I'm interested in the topic. I've published a novel entitled "Boulevard of Baku", devoted to contemporary life in the country, to the work of the law-enforcement agencies and the co-existing problems.

- Are our intellectuals sometimes afraid to be sincere?

- I don't think so. There are always people who are afraid of nothing. For instance, the late Academician Zia Budyanov was never afraid. I appreciate the words of the Mexican poet Carlos Fuentes, who once said: "To fight for freedom is a freedom".

- Don't you think that today's people are more evil than in Soviet times?

- You see, in Soviet times the ideas of friendship, compassion and cooperation were very popular. Today people are extremely individualistic, they are interested only in money and their own profit.

- Does the Soviet reader differ from the modern one?

- Oh yes, they do. The Soviet reader was much more fastidious and had much more exquisite taste. Today literature is mainly an entertainment, although I believe that it should teach a moral lesson.