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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN April 3, 2005 Issue 
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life By Tom Reiss Random House, 2005  Identity of a Mysterious Writer Uncovered It was in 1970 that a captivating novel by a mysterious writer appeared on the American literary scene, quickly becoming a bestseller and acquiring a cult-like following. That novel was "Ali & Nino" and its author was Kurban Said. It had first been published in Germany in 1937. The only thing known about its brilliant author was that Kurban Said was his nom de plume. "No one seems to know for certain the real name of the man who chose it. This is his only book and the man is as shadowy as the book is vivid," the Introduction to the novel stated. Set in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, "Ali & Nino" is a masterfully written love story between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl, children of two of the city's oil rich aristocratic families. But their love is lost in the turmoil of the times - the desperate struggle of the Russian empire to hold onto the region, the ascent of Western progress there, the audacious splendor of oil wealth and the Russian Revolution. The novel's beauty and descriptions of the complex history and traditions of the region intensified even more the readers' curiosity about the identity of the author. Finally, 35 years after the American publication of "Ali & Nino," the mystery of Kurban Said has been solved. The just published book, "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss is as close as one can get to a definitive biography of the man who called himself Kurban Said. The book is already on the bestselling list. "Wherever I went, Kurban Said seemed to pursue me," author Tom Reiss writes in the Introduction. The tale of solving the mystery of Kurban Said's identity is in itself an adventure. But even more adventurous is the life of the man who wrote a beautiful love story under that pseudonym. His real name was Lev Nussimbaum. He was the son of a Jewish millionaire and grew up in cosmopolitan and multi-cultural Baku when the city was a part of czarist Russia. Lev was born at the time of the 1905 revolution and subsequent massacres whose aftershocks resounded even throughout distant Baku. In fact, much of Stalin's early revolutionary, anarchist and terrorist work was centered in Baku. Years later, Lev would relegate his friends with stories about Stalin's visits to his home. Lev's mother committed suicide when he was either seven or eight years old. Reiss discovered that she was Jewish and a revolutionary who may have been involved in Stalin's extortionist plots. She may have had to commit suicide when it became known that she, a wife of a millionaire, had been working to subvert her own husband and family. In the beginning of the twentieth century half of the world's oil came from Baku. It was a time when everyone coveted the oil-drenched city. The oil frenzy made Baku - geographically situated on the cusp of Europe and Asia - truly international as well as ethnically and religiously progressive and tolerant. Lev and his father managed to escape when the Soviets came to Baku, eventually ending up in the Russian émigré section of Berlin. There Lev restyled himself as a Muslim aristocrat of ancient lineage with an equally aristocratic Russian mother. He took the name Essad Bey and went on to become a best selling writer in Nazi Germany and to acquire international recognition. Lev was what in the nineteenth century was known as a Jewish Orientalist. He was a man of enormous learning, intellect, imagination and love of the mysteries of Central Asia. He created for himself the persona of the Muslim aristocrat and made a supreme effort to obscure his real identity. Unfortunately, notoriety, scandal and the Nazi police pursued him from Berlin to Vienna and finally to Positano, Italy where he died in 1942. For five years Reiss searched through police records, forsaken correspondence in decaying castles and palazzos, used bookstores, publishers and newspapers. His leads took him to exotic locales and meetings with eccentric, even bizarre individuals. At the end he was able to write a complete biography of a deliberately elusive person. In his search for the real Kurban Said, the author takes us on an incredible journey through history. This book must not be missed! Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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