The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life Book

It is hard to fathom that 2019 is winding down. For the last two months I am focusing on books that have been on my to read pile for the longest and books by authors that I have previously read and enjoyed. Reading mainly nonfiction has been enlightening even if I didn't stick to my original plan to read twenty Pulitzer winners. One Pulitzer winner I did read back in January was The Black Count about the real life inspiration for the Count of Monte Cristo. Needing a fast paced adventure to pique my interest now that the days have gotten shorter, I returned to Tom Reiss and his earlier work The Orientalist. In another real life adventure that spanned three continents, I knew that I would be in for a whirlwind ride.

Ali and Nino: A Love Story is undoubtedly the most famous novel to come from the nation of Azerbaijan. The book's author is known only as Kurban Said, but Tom Reiss, as well as other literary critics of the twentieth century wanted to know who Kurban Said was. After much research, Reiss determined that Said was most likely a writer named Essad Bey, who was really a Azeri writer named Lev Nussimbaum. Yet, who was this Essad Bey/Lev Nussimbaum character? Was he a pen name so the actual author could get published or an actual writer? The identity of Kurban Said has puzzled the critics for decades, and Reiss was determined to be the one who found out the layers and facets to Kurban Said's origin.

Lev Nussimbaum was born in Baku, Azerbaijan on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution when the territory still belonged to Russia. His mother was a revolutionary who saw that things were not going so well for the Reds, at least at first, so she killed herself, leaving Lev to be raised by his father Avraham Nussimbaum, a millionaire oil magnate. Baku had been the center of the oil trade for two thousand years and had attracted Jewish refugees from across the diaspora since the fall of the second temple in 70 C.E. With a strategic location on the routes to India and it's proximity to Persia and the Middle East, world powers realized that if they gained control of Azerbaijan, they could conceivably control the world. Until 1917, life was good for Jews in Azerbaijan, so Avraham chose to stay in Baku and enjoy life as an oilman. Once the Stalinist takeover was complete, effectively banning religion across the Soviet Union, Avraham knew that he and Lev, age twelve, would have to leave their adopted nation behind, so they fled Azerbaijan for good.

Eventually the Nussimbaums would reach England, and Avraham needed to find a gymnasium for Lev to complete his schooling. At age fifteen, he was already more worldly than most of his peers, and this task was more difficult than Avraham had foreseen. Eventually, the father and son settled in Berlin, which in the interwar years was a sanctuary city for Jews fleeing Russia. Lev enrolled in a night high school for Russian émigrés but felt uncomfortable. Coming from an Oriental background with a swarthy complexion, Lev did not fit in with Ashkenazic Jews from the Russian Pale of Settlement. As a teenager, Lev already showed a propensity for writing novels and biographies and enrolled at a college during the day while finishing high school at night. Reiss notes of the political situation in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, and suggests that as the climate grew worse for Jews, Lev would have to reinvent himself if he stood a chance to get published. As an Orientalist, Lev Nussimbaum became Essad Bey, used this name for his publications, and officially converted to Islam.

Lev Nussimbaum only lived to be thirty six, but he was an old thirty six. He died in 1942 in Positano, Italy. In the 1930s, Lev and Nussimbaum relocated to Vienna before the Anschluss, Lev married his former secretary Ericka, the daughter of a shoe magnate, and the small immediate family relocated to New York. Ericka's father sensed that Europe was about to become a powder keg and enjoyed life in America, and the family easily adapted to life on 5th Avenue. All but Lev/Essad Bey. He pined for his contacts in Europe as he believed that being based there was best for remaining a relevant author, so he divorced Ericka and returned to Vienna. Returning to a country where his life was in danger puzzled all his friends and acquaintances as well as the author. If Kurban Said was really Lev Nussimbaum, then why would he return to a country where being a Jew was grounds for being killed. Reiss dug through mounds of correspondence to find the answer to this puzzle, yet it became irrelevant when Lev moved to the Amalfi Coast of Italy for the final years of his life. Swarthy in complexion and Oriental in appearance, Lev was spared from deportation, even after Italy entered into an alliance with Germany. Living as Essad Bey would save his life for the time being.

The journey of Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey/ Kurban Said was a compelling story. It took me on an adventure over three continents and rivaled Indiana Jones and Lawrence of Arabia for thrills. The only difference is that Nussimbaum's story was real, and Reiss tells the story of a writer and the nexus of religion and race during the interwar years to paint a picture of the political and cultural climate for non Aryan people during the early 1930s. I found Nussimbaum's story to be compelling and finished it in a little over a day. I know that Reiss' writing gets better because he would go on to win a Pulitzer for his next book, The Black Count, another true to life adventure story. With the days getting shorter and sunlight at a premium, I need fast paced stories to hold my interest. The Orientalist fit the bill nicely.

4 stars