Azərbaycanın ədəbiyyat portalı - Azerbaijan Literature Portal

Azerbaijan Literature Portal

      Welcome to the english version of Lit.az devoted to the promotion and encouragement of Azerbaijan literature. An independently operated project Lit.az aims to serve as an open and impartial informational source for creative writing and literary culture in Azerbaijan.
       No dynamic and vital literature, in any language or nation, can survive without disagreements, oppositions, the emergence of sharp personal or group rivalries. And in this respect, Azerbaijan literature is – or should be – no exception. In many respects, the emergence in the past fifteen-odd years of separate cliques and coteries, of distinct allegiances among writers, is an altogether welcome development, erasing the arbitrary and often literally violent division of literary life into “official” and “dissident” camps according to the dictates of Soviet cultural policy. At the same time, such diversity of artistic practice and orientation necessarily evades easy summary, and all too frequently is met with the response of a conscious or unconscious favoritism on the part of those whose task it is to act with true impartiality. As much as is possible within the limits of human fallibility, Lit.az sincerely hopes to avoid the snares of assigning praise or blame according to an author’s associations with a specific group, circle, or literary journal, and to remain open to all interested persons – authors, translators, critics – who have a genuine contribution to make.
       In other words: Lit.az does not intend to serve as the exclusive “sales agent” for specific circles of current Azerbaijani writers, nor to act as a critical arbiter for determining which literary phenomena are significant or merely peripheral. Its english version of "About project" simply – yet is it indeed so simple a matter? – proposes to offer a general portrait for literary community of the world, for those who have an interest in Azerbaijan literature. And above all: to present, within the inevitably open society of the internet, a clearly delimited yet independent “electronic agora” of those wildly diverse impulses and inspiration that, in the end, are the essential basis of any literature.