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The Orientalist :In Search of a Man caught between East and West
The Orientalist :In Search of a Man caught between East and West
paperback
Published:
6 July, 2006
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Description
The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world.
Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself 'Kurban Said' when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, and discovered a novel instead. Written on the eve of the Second World War, Ali and Nino is a captivating love story set in the glamorous city of Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. The novel's depiction of a lost cosmopolitan society is enthralling, but equally intriguing is the identity of the man who wrote it. Who was its supposed author? And why was he so forgotten that no one could agree on the simplest facts about him?
For five years, Reiss tracked Lev Nussimbaum, alias Kurban Said, from a wealthy Jewish childhood in Baku, to a romantic adolescence in Persia on the run from the Bolsheviks, and an exile in Berlin as bestselling author and self-proclaimed Muslim prince. 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.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780099483779 |
| ISBN10 | 0099483777 |
| Number Of Pages | 480 |
| Item Weight | 333 g |
| Product Dimensions | 131 x 199 x 30 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Vintage Publishing |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
Wonderfully compelling... Deeply moving * Sunday Times *
A wonderous tale, beautifully told...mesmerising, poignant and almost incredible * New York Times *
Meticulous and fascinating... Inspiring reading * Spectator *
Extraordinary on many counts... It has taken the tireless detective work of Tom Reiss to uncover the real Lev Nussimbaum * Sunday Times *
A highly entertaining biography of a very unusual person * Literary Review *
An extraordinary tale of reinvention * Guardian *
Funny, exactly observed and humane * Daily Telegraph *
A highly enjoyable mingling of scholarship and sleuthing that elegantly solves the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers -- Paul Theroux
A remarkable story of East meeting West, and the fantastic historical figure who stood astride both worlds, during an almost equally fantastic moment in time. This is history and biography that reads like a great novel -- Kevin Baker, author of Paradise Alley
He has a sharp eye for incongruities, and peppers the book with entertaining footnotes * Sunday Telegraph *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Born in 1964, Tom Reiss is an American author and journalist who lives in New York. He is the author of The Orientalist, an acclaimed biography of Lev Nussimbaum (aka Kurban Said) which was shortlisted for the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize; and The Black Count, a book about the real Count of Monte Christo.