Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli

Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli

Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli (alternative Azerbaijani spelling Yusif Vazir Çämänzäminli ; born September 12, 1887 in Şuşa , Azerbaijan ; † 1943 in Sukhobesvodnaya , Gorky Oblast , Russian SFSR ) was an Azerbaijani writer and statesman.

Life

He belonged to the government of the Republic of Azerbaijan, was foreign minister of his country in 1919, and Azerbaijani ambassador to Turkey since 1919 . After the Soviet invasion of Azerbaijan in 1920, he lived in Istanbul , went to Paris in 1923 and returned to Azerbaijan via Berlin in 1926. In 1939 he was arrested by the Stalinist government and died in 1943 in the Sukhobesvodnaya gulag camp, Gorky Oblast .

Works

He wrote, among other things, novels Fountain of the Girls (1934) and In Blood (1936–37).

In Azerbaijan and Turkey he is considered to be the author of the famous novel Ali and Nino (in Europe it is mainly assumed that Lev Nussimbaum was the author ), which was first published in 1937 in Vienna under the pseudonym Kurban Said in German. Nussimbaum also used this pseudonym, but there are indications that the work was written by Çəmənzəminli.

Ali and Nino is both a beautiful and tragic love story as well as a story of the Republic of Azerbaijan and a passionate declaration of love for the country and its people, even if the author often likes to be self-critical. The book also shows “inside knowledge” about the activities of the Azerbaijani government. This also indicates that this book could have been written by the statesman and Azerbaijani Çəmənzəminli rather than the Nussimbaum, since Nussimbaum was only 13 years old in 1918, when the Republic of Azerbaijan was founded, and even later had hardly any reference to Azerbaijan.