War, Peace, Literature

Introduction, Reading, and Discussion

The (self-)critical examination of conflicts and their causes is one of the most important prerequisites for peacebuilding. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in and around Nagorno-Karabakh was marked by severe human rights violations and war crimes, which were often perceived only from the victim's perspective on both sides. However, the lack of empathy and the failure to acknowledge the suffering inflicted on the "enemy" ultimately leads to a loss of one's own humanity. Often, the "enemy" was an immediate neighbor who was displaced during the course of the war. Particularly in Azerbaijan, the suffering of internally displaced persons and refugees was instrumentalized to fuel revenge and retaliation.

The prominent Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli was the first to address the destructive hatred toward the neighboring people in his 2006-07 "novel-requiem" "Stone Dreams" (published December 2012). Much later, the Armenian writer Howik Afjan followed with his novel "Red is the…