Ashes of Our Fathers Inside the Fall of NagornoKarabakh

<p><strong>‘Thoughtful, considered and understated . . . a fine book telling a story that needed to be told. . . Gavin deserves a lot of credit for threading together the lives of civilians on both sides in this humane account.’ — <em>The Times</em></strong></p><p>On 19 September 2023, war broke out once again in Nagorno-Karabakh, a tiny breakaway state nestled in the mountains at the very edge of Europe.</p><p>This geopolitical hotspot had been fought over since the Soviet Union fell, with tens of thousands dead and up to a million homeless. This time, though, was different. Within 24 hours, Armenian forces surrendered to Azerbaijan, as Russian peacekeepers abandoned post--and the entire population packed their bags to flee.</p><p>Through the stories of ordinary Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Gabriel Gavin chronicles how Nagorno-Karabakh went from an ancient home shared by both peoples to a battle-scarred land of empty houses and untended graves. <em>Ashes of Our Fathers</em> reveals a simmering ethnic conflict inside the Kremlin''s self-declared sphere of influence; the lives and loyalties of the people caught up in the chaos; and the decisions, from Yerevan and Baku to Moscow and Washington to Tel Aviv and Tehran, that enabled one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of the 2020s.</p>