Original language:
Azeri Translated from: Russian
Authors: Mehdi Abdullayev, Kamal
Translated by: Lapinskienė, Lionė
Full translated source bibliographical description:
Abdullayev Kamal Mehdi oğlu „Sehrbazlar dərəsi“ (roman), Bakı. 2006, Iš azerbaidžaniečių kalbos vertė Liudmila Lavrova
ISBN: 978-9955-20-815-0
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 2013
Publisher: Edukologija
“The valley of magicians” – is the intellectual story about the inner feelings of people, their relationships between each other which cause moral dilemmas and helps to reveal the true values of life. In this novel, real and spiritual worlds are constantly colliding, showing big differences and mismatches between each other. This volume tells the story about Karavanbashi – a steady traveler, who is torn apart by internal suffering and his desire to get to the valley, in order to find a magician and bring him to the city. Karavanbashi who is leading the caravan towards the home asked his faithful follower Khaja Ibrahim ago to go to the valley of magicians which is shrouded in mystery and is located in the foothills of the invisible mountain. Karavanbashi was unable to go himself because he couldn‘t abandon the caravan. However, the main purpose of this journey was to discover the magician, who would have the power to communicate with spirits and to bring him to Karavanbaši. When he was accommodated in the home of the protagonist, the magician Saijakh had to summon the spirit of Karavanbaši father, which would reveal all the secrets and put an end to his son‘s inner agony, which was accompanying him all his lifetime.
Moreover, one of the most important things in the novel is the feeling of revenge. To avenge his father’s death, for many years was the only life purpose for the protagonist, which didn‘t allow him to experience the true happiness of life. Ongoing thoughts about the punishment for his father’s killer was destroying him from the inside and forced to overlook the most significant values of life such as family and the feeling of love. In addition, as one of the consequences of this kind of lifestyle – was suicide, because after the disclosure of all the secrets and his father‘s spirit wish to completely forget about the revenge, his life instantly has lost all the meaning.
Furthermore, the next raised problem in this piece is the confrontation of real and spiritual worlds. In the evergreen valley of magicians, people who were living in there strongly believed the importance of peace and kindness, so for these reasons they were forced to distance themselves from the outside world, where chaos prevailed. In magicians belief, the peace of mind and inner balance is one of the most important things in the human existence, which needs to be constantly nurtured and appreciated.
What is more, one of the most interesting emphases in this book is the demonstration of the fragility of the human life. Every memory, secret and journey are led by new deaths. In the novel, people are punished by death without much contemplation, because of their or relatives sins. In contrast to the usual, in this book children, women and elderly people are killed without ant exceptions. Nobody receives the mercy. However, at the end of the story only the son of Karavanbašas is saved from the entire family, who as a child symbolizes purity and innocence. Because of these qualities, a child is taken to grow in the valley of magicians, away from the outside world full of evil.
In the novel „The valley of magicians“ there are a lot of metaphors and specific words which are only found in languages of Eastern countries (their explanations are given at the beginning of the book). In addition, every few paragraphs memories of the distant past are inserted, so the book should be read with great concentration.
Abdullayev Kamal Mehdi (b. 1950) – a writer from Azerbaijan, Ph.D., professor, and academician. Also known as a classic of modern literature, the honored scientist of Azerbaijan and Nobel prize nominee in 2012. Moreover, the author has written a number of poems, dramas, essays, short stories and several novels. One of the latter is a philosophical allegorical novel called „The valley of magicians“ – the first book of Kamal Abdulla which was translated into the Lithuanian language.