Background
Afandiyev was born to the family of famous Azerbaijani writer Ilyas Afandiyev on May 13, 1943 in Baku.
Afandiyev was born to the family of famous Azerbaijani writer Ilyas Afandiyev on May 13, 1943 in Baku.
He completed his secondary education in 1960 and studied at Baku State University, graduating in 1965 with a degree in philology.
Since his early childhood, Elchin Afandiyev was surrounded by literature and an academic environment. Azerbaijani folklore and world literature played a significant role in Afandiyev"s future career. He wrote his first novel when he was 16 years old, which was published in Azərbaycan gəncləri (Azerbaijani Youth) magazine in 1959.
In 1968, he completed his post-graduate studies at the Nizami Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, writing a 500-page dissertation.
In 1965, he published a collection of novels called Minister gecədən biri (One of thousand nights). In the following years, nearly 100 books of Afandiyev were translated and published in English, French, German, Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Arabic, Persian, Mandarin, Czechoslovakian, Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Moldovan, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Serbian and other languages.
There have been about five million copies sold worldwide. During Soviet rule, Afandiyev was a deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Since 1993, he has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan.
As a Deputy Prime Minister, he supervises various sectors of government activity such as sports and cultural relations.
He has also chaired the Vətən cultural organization, which focuses on cultural ties with other countries.
Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Union of Writers]
He is also a member of several government committees and is a member of Education Committee under the President of Azerbaijan.