Aliyev & Co.: 35 Letter to My Son: English Language Edition

Zeynal Ibragimov’s book “Aliyev & Co.: 35 Letters to My Son” is dedicated to the tragic events in Azerbaijan in January of 1990. An Azerbaijani journalist at the time of the Armenian pogroms in Baku (capital of Azerbaijan), the author not only was an eye-witness of massacres of ethnic Armenians, but also became a reluctant observer of Heydar Aliyev’s shrewd return to power as the president of Azerbaijan. Aliyev stopped at nothing to safeguard his country’s oil wealth and to secure his clan’s dictatorship (he was succeeded by his son, Ilham Aliyev, in 2003).

The book was published in the Russian language in January of 2018 to mark the 28th anniversary of the harrowing events on the streets of Baku. “Aliyev & Co: 35 Letters to My Son” immediately caused an extremely hostile and aggressive reaction of the Azerbaijani authorities who declared the author ‘a traitor of the homeland’.

After the publication of the book, Zeynal Ibrahimov gave an interview to the Caucasus Services of Radio Liberty. In the interview, the author expressed his opinion about the Nagorno-Karabakh territorial dispute as well as condemned the falsification of Azerbaijani history. The interview was promptly removed from Radio Liberty’s site at the insistence of the Azerbaijani government.

In 2019 the Russian language version of the book was also published in Armenia.

On February 1st, 2020, ‘Aliyev & Co.: 35 Letters to My Son’ was published in the English language. It is available on Amazon sites around the world in both paperback and electronic versions. The book familiarises the English-reading audience with the events of 30 years ago and helps counteract the Azerbaijani state propaganda.

Aliyev’s family dictatorial regime turned the country’s population into frightened and submissive executors of the authorities’ will and made the anti-Armenian hysteria into a state policy. It also spares neither effort nor money to spread its version of the events in Sumgait, Khojaly, and Baku and to present the world with the falsified facts about this 30-year-old conflict.