Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-rich, War-torn, Post-Soviet Republic - Hardcover

Goltz, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765602431 ISBN 13: 9780765602435

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

In its first years as an independent state, Azerbaijan was a prime example of post-Soviet chaos - beset by coups and civil strife and astride an ethnic, political and religious divide. Author Goltz was detoured in Baku in mid-1991 and decided to stay, this diary is the record of his experiences.

About this title

From the Publisher:

From The New York Times, Sunday, October 25, 1998
"Tommy the Turk was late, and the organizers of the monthly nonfiction reading at the KGB Bar on East Fourth Street were worried. The former Communist meeting hall, with its dusty Soviet-era propaganda, was packed with academics, journalists, graduate students, diplomats and others. Tommy the Turk, a.k.a, Thomas Goltz is the author of "Azerbaijan Diary"...Mr. 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...Mr. Goltz read an excerpt from his book in which, after dodging bullets in a war zone, he is shunned by an editor he is trying to reach by phone. At a party later that night, he is distraught. A former psychologist to the cosmonauts observes him swigging from a bottle of whisky and tells him there is only one cure for depression: Danger. It is classic Goltz, a liquor-fueled mix of depair and bravado." - Anthony Lappe, The New York Times, Sunday, October 25, 1998

From the Back Cover:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0765602431
• ISBN 13: 9780765602435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560