ashes of our fathers

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.

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 their posts--and the entire population packed their bags to flee.

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. Ashes of Our Fathers 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.

Gabriel Gavin is a journalist and writer from Oxford, England. He has covered the politics and foreign affairs of the former Soviet Union and Turkey as a reporter for Politico, as well as for outlets including Time, Foreign Policy and The Spectator. This is his first book.