Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in … refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.
But Lev’s life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud’s and Einstein’s–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini’s official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his “true” identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound.
Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject’s life. Reiss’s quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.
As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum’s deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.
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I learned so much about our world and the journey of a very interesting human. Enlightening is the word for me.
Fascinating read
This is one of the most intricately woven, intensely researched books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this year.
So much about this book impressed me, but nothing more than the way Tom Reiss wove together so many seemingly disparate stories. These stories encompass the series of Russian revolutions, the creation of the Pale, the desert histories of Persia and its re-emergence as Iran, the morphing of the Ottoman Empire into Turkey and the end of the caliphate, the history of mountain Jews in the Caucuses, and ultimately the Machiavellian view in Western Europe and the U.S. that Nazism be, for lack of a better word, embraced in order that Communism and the “red menace” of the Bolsheviks spread no further west. The research and crafting of these histories alone is an immense undertaking, but none of them is the primary story of The Orientalist.
That is the story of world-renowned author Leo (Lev) Nussimbaum, aka Essad Bey, aka Kurban Said and his remarkable life. From a childhood in Baku, Azerbaijan, at the time of the Russian revolution, to death in Fascist, WWII Italy, he seems to have witnessed every major event of the first four decades of the twentieth century. Understanding that only 10 years after his death John Steinbeck was not familiar with him, Nussimbaum/Bey/Said helps frame the sheer amount of detective work Reiss undertook to bring this project to fruition. In addition to being beautifully written and seamlessly crafted (no small feat considering the number of intertwined stories), Reiss does an exquisite job of relaying his own experience researching and writing the book, his interviews with numerous quirky characters, his dogged hunt for documents large and small, and the surprises along the way.
(This review was originally published at: http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2011/11/orientalist.html).
This was one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Lev Nussimbaum’s story was incredible, as was the author’s own story of tracking down Lev’s bizarre, mysterious story. Great History writing, amazing bio.
This is a non-fiction biography about a man whose life reads like a fantastic work of fiction. Because he died 70+ years ago and was himself his threatened by the Nazis, he tried to cover many of his own tracks, making the research effort to flesh out his life all the more complicated.
If your curious about the events that have helped shape this geopolitical world, The Orientalist will help connect the dots. I learned so much from the roots of the Middle East agitation in the 19th and 20th centuries and the Bolshevik Revolution, through the European conflicts enabled by Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, this is not the story of just one man but of an entire continent. I finished it months ago and I’m still talking about it.
This was a very interesting book. However, it was very long and portions of it dragged. I had to keep at it to finish. It had important insights into the history of the time it covered, pre-World War II, especially Hitler’s association with Communists and Muslims. The way the protagonist kept reinventing himself was fascinating.
A cameleon by any other name! An extraordinary Zelig in a time of great upheaval. Amazing story which would have engaged me more if better written.
Following the life of one unique person through a complex and troubling time gave me new insights about motivations and prejudices of European countries between the wars. At times it was a tedious read but worth the effort.
Beautifully written, richly detailed, couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend.
It opens a whole world you knew was there but knew little about. Everything seems factually accurate but in a book this unique; who knows. One of the most fascinating reads I have had in a long time.
Man had an interesting and unusual life. Seems well researched. Gave me a look into an era in Europe including countries that don’t come up very often from the turn of the century ’till WW2. Held my attention to the end.
Too wordy, a lot to wade through.