Artush and Zaur

Artush and Zaur (Azerbaijani: Artuş və Zaur) is a novel by Azerbaijani writer and journalist Ali Akbar (alias of Alakbar Aliyev) published in 2009. It narrates the love story of two fictional men: Artush Saroyan, an Armenian, and Zaur Jalilov, an Azerbaijani. The novel became a controversy due to the existing enmity between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a result of the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as homosexuality being a taboo topic in both societies, despite being made legal in the early 2000s.