<p>From the<strong> Academy award winning screenpla</strong>y writer of&nbsp;<strong>Burnt by the Sun</strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Solar Plexus&nbsp;</strong>is a compelling saga of family and friendship, love and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Azerbaijan's rapidly-changing capital, Baku, as the country struggles with the transition into a post-Soviet world...</p><p><br></p><p>Spanning three generations and stretching from the 1940s to the 1990s, the four distinct parts that make up&nbsp;<em>Solar Plexus</em>&nbsp;intertwine to tell the tale of a group of friends who grew-up around the same courtyard in Baku. Each section is told from a different perspective as the friends' passions, deceits, rivalries and disappointments play out against the shifting turmoil of those decades: from the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's Purges, to the industrial institutes and&nbsp;<em>Russification&nbsp;</em>of the '50s and '60s, through to the struggle for independence and violence of the early '90s.</p><p><br></p><p>The lives of Alik, Marat, Lucky, Eldar and Seidzade are realised with rare insight and a superb eye for the bigger picture, but also with humour, and a recognition of life's absurdity that recalls writers from Bulgakov to Kundera. Ibragimbekov evokes a world of passion and honour, of proud men and hot-headed women, of great tenderness and complex humanity, where "the truth is always just one of many truths." The novel is equally a paean to the multiculturalism of Baku, and a time when a person's worth was measured by their qualities, not whether they had been born an Azeri, Russian, Jew or Armenian - a time brought to a violent end by the war with Armenia, when friends and neighbours were suddenly turned against one another, and broad-minded inclusion gave way to an exclusive and crude nationalism.</p><p><br></p><p>Represented by&nbsp;Susanna Lea Associates.</p>