Tom Reiss: `The Orientalist'

I am not in the habit of leaving on-line feedback about my reading, but this book, `The Orientalist', is so exceptional, so original, so brilliantly conceived and so splendidly executed, that - given the chance to leave some comments - it seems almost mean-spirited not to take up the opportunity.

In fact, I've already provided some `feedback' about this book, recommending it (via email) to others. This in itself, on reflection, seems to me to be unusual behaviour. Normally I let others make their own discoveries, finding for themselves what to read that may be interesting, informative or enjoyable. In this sense, therefore, as well as others, this book, `The Orientalist', took me out of my accustomed ways of looking at things.

Everyone to whom I've recommended this book has purchased it and told me how remarkable it is. One reader, in France, wrote back to say that she'd read it twice! In some ways I can understand that, as, while reading it, more than once I returned to earlier chapters to re-read certain passages, to acquaint myself again with some of the personalities and events with which the book is occupied, and with the well-crafted prose of the author.

What is `The Orientalist' `about'? In some ways this is a non-fiction detective story, with the author investigating a kind of literary mystery. There is, for a start, a book, a novel, `Ali and Nino'. But who wrote it? About this, the authorship of what appears to be the pre-eminent national work of Azerbaijan, a romantic, compelling novel, there is, or has been, considerable controversy. In a sense, as in any mystery, in any detective story, there is a `crime' - in this case, the crime being the theft, from an author (now deceased), of credit for his work.

But in investigating this question, Tom Reiss uncovers layer after layer of lost fragments of history, and politics, and culture. The deeper he explores this question of authorship, the greater the breadth (historical, political and cultural) of the book. In the end, this is a wonderful journey that Tom Reiss takes his readers on, travelling back in time and across borders, into and out of nations and empires whose eventful lives and often dismal fortunes correspond to that of `the Orientalist' himself.

For the title of the book refers not to a `type' of person, but rather to a specific individual, and, as a result, this book rescues that person - born Lev Nussimbaum, and subsequently known both as Essad Bey and as Kurban Said - from literary obscurity. It is a rescue entirely deserved. Tom Reiss was drawn into the life of Lev Nussimbaum as a result of being captivated by one of his books, Ali and Nino, and, in a somewhat comparable fashion, though at the same time a bit topsy-turvy, I was drawn to read Lev Nussimbaum's `Ali and Nino' as a result of reading Tom Reiss's `The Orientalist'.

This on-line comment about `The Orientalist' is not intended to be a full-length review of the book; it is `feedback' and, at the same time, a warm invitation to experience a truly unique piece of work. Of course, one of the characters in the book is Tom Reiss himself, travelling about, meeting people, coming across manuscripts. Some of those he meets are to be found in castles, in Europe; others are down the street, if not down the hall, in New York City apartments. The logic of his book is compelling, as he discovers, and uncovers, the life that Lev and his father led - the life of refugees, fleeing from revolutionary violence, falling from a dreamy and dream-like existence in Baku to the desperate straits of exile, in `the East', through Turkestan and Persia, to Constantinople, and then on to Paris and Berlin.

For me, this is an account, as well, of the devotion of two people, father and son, to one another's well-being. The father, once wealthy (on Baku oil), strives to lead his son towards peace and security; the history of the 20th century, filled with war and revolution, characterised by cruelty rather than compassion, makes these goals all too elusive. Still, in reduced and hazardous circumstances, they try to look after one another, and it is their relationship - their concern for one another - and the life-and-death predicaments in which they continue to find themselves, that provides a deeply touching motif to the work.

But for the most part this is an exciting, even thrilling, fast-paced real-life thriller. In order for us to understand what is going on - and how Lev Nussimbaum is going to turn into Kurban Said - Tom Reiss has to explain the politics - the revolutions, the wars, the personalities - pivotal to the story of Lev and his father Abraham. Here is a book in which the main character, Lev Nussimbaum - born in 1905 on a train, with an oil magnate for a father and a radical revolutionary for a mother - arrives, in Baku, on the day of his birth, to a city in turmoil, a forerunner of a life shaped by politics and upheaval. In later years he will personally blame Stalin (who seems to have been a friend of his mother's and may have stayed in the family home) for much of his life's turbulence and misfortunes. In this respect a depiction of Lev Nussimbaum's life seems to me to validate the writer Arthur Koestler's observation in the first volume of his autobiography, `Arrow in the Blue', that a `secular horoscope', noting the political events on earth at the time of a person's birth and their subsequent influence over a person's life - `the constellation of earthly events' - may well provide a useful perspective on a person's subsequent fate.

One consequence of reading the book - and becoming caught up in the lives of its protagonists - is to regard one's own life, at least for a time, somewhat differently. That surely is a mark of an outstanding book - to cause oneself to look at one's life in a new light. This moment occurred most dramatically when I had just finished reading about Lev, as a young boy, disobeying orders, and looking out a window, to see bodies in the street, and carts coming by, gathering up the dead - as the shooting between different revolutionary factions continued. Thinking of what I'd read, and of his plight, while walking through the streets where I live, I suddenly saw those streets, and the buildings adjacent to them, in a different way, observing their tranquility - noticing what was absent: no bodies; no gunshots; no armed men - in contrast with what was `normal' in the life of this young man, not even 100 years ago.

Tom Reiss's `The Orientalist' is a magnificent achievement, a stunning, brilliantly researched and absorbingly written publication. This on-line comment, already far too long, can only hint at the extraordinary array of topics traversed in the narrative. Indeed, I can scarcely recall a book any way like it, so wide-ranging, fascinating, original and informative - and, as noted, quite moving as well. The book is an adventure and it will lead readers to discover places, people, events, incidents and lives they scarcely could have dreamed existed. And it may also lead some readers to find their way to `Ali and Nino', a lovely jewel of a novel, dream-like and wonderful; and for making that journey possible Tom Reiss is also warmly to be thanked.

I read this book for my Book Club.
I read The Orientalist last summer ('07) and now the book seems to fade into obscurity.
I don't remember a whole lot, but I do remember not really coming to care a whole lot about Kurban Said.
Very forgetable to me although there is a bit of history that is interesting.

I was a bit dissapointed in this book. I had read Ali and Nino and, of course, the reviews for this book. I was prepared for adventure in the form of a historical novel. I wonder if the reviewers cited in the front and back of the book only read the introduction, which gives away the story, including the 'ending.' The rest of the book provides historical context to the story told in the introduction. There are relatively long (20-30 pages?) digressions on the history of (for example) the Ottoman Empire, German culture during the rise of the Nazis, etc. Very interesting and worthwhile stuff to be sure and I am very glad that I read this book. However, readers need to be prepared for this type of text. The read was quite a bit slower than I expected. The 'story' in my opinion, is much more interesting than the book itself. The 'story' here, includes the efforts of the author, which were certainly inspiring.

I wanted to read this autobiography for two reasons: 1)I very much enjoyed the novel, 'Ali and Nino' by Essad Bey; and 2) I am fascinated with the history of the Caucuses and Central Asia.

Tom Reiss thoroughly explores Bey's life from his childhood in Azerbaijan during the most turbulent times of the early 20th century, but Mr. Reiss goes beyond that, and depicts the times and events. The accounts of Russian history and the Bolshevik revolution are fascinating. Later on, when Bey lives in Berlin, the book tends to slow a bit. Overall, 'The Orientalist' is a fascinating account of European history during the rise of Bolshevism and fascism.Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan

The book feels a bit like watching 'Pop up video'. The tale is of a man trying to shed his identity in a world that hates who he is. The story is interspersed with a secret history of the early 20th century. About half the book has little to do with the central character. Its more a history of the time in which he lives.
What's appealing about the book is that there is a lot of history that I had no clue about. Jewish Orientalist history, about Stalin, Germany etc but the story about Leo Nussimbaum feels to me flawed. I don't understand why he deceided to be a writer. I don't understand what made him tick. He makes all sorts of strange decisions that the author cannot unravel.
An intersting book in bits but doesn't hold together as a biography.

Lots of interesting lore, lots of speculations about the crisis of the modern world, but actually very little about Lev Nussimbaum, the so-called Orientatlist. How did he get his knowledge, considering how marginal his education was? What did his books really offer the reader, since very few have ever had the opportunity to read him? Why did he stay in Fascist Europe? Why did he die at 35 or 36 and look in a contemporary photo like a man of seventy? There is much here that is not answered. There is no discussion of what value Orientalism has. I suspect that the author has simply gotten carried away with eccentricities without ever having determined what value all this material may have.

When Leon Trotsky allegedly asked his son, "who is Essad Bey (aka Lev Nussimbaum)" what is this supposed to signify? Perhaps if Nussimbaum had asked his father "who is Leon Trotsky" we would have learned something of value.

This book is fascinating, not only because of the life of the main character which is an incredible saga. But I found that I learned so much, each page is full of well researched information. It is a review of the the first half of the 20th Century, so rich with descriptions of the intellectual and historical context. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This account of a man who lived a varied, varying life is well foretold by the subtitle. Essentially a story of one way to combat religous discrimination, it evolves into a strange, mysterious series of events where a Jew passes for Muslim. His life treks Asia Minor and Europe for the first half of the 20th century and the author captures it brilliantly. The best nonfiction I read this past year.

This account of a man who lived a varied, varying life is well foretold by the subtitle. Essentially a story of one way to combat religous discrimination, it evolves into a strange, mysterious series of events where a Jew passes for Muslim. His life treks Asia Minor and Europe for the first half of the 20th century and the author captures it brilliantly. The best nonfiction I read this past year.

The story of Lev Nussinbaum--or is it Essad Bay--is much more than the biography of one man. Through his one enigmatic character, ___ is able to explore entire cultures and literally hundred years of complex history in one of the most conflicted regions in the world. In this way, ___ uses Nussinbaum as a window into issues and events ranging from the Eastern European oil boom to insitutionalized racism and, yes, even into love. Despite the fact that the window is often cloudy--due to Lev's unrelenting travels and embellishments--I felt as though I was given a crystal clear view of a society I know almost nothing about. I learned more about European history than in any Western Civilization class, I was more horrified by the atrocities committed by almost every party than I have in any WWI or WWII movie and I ventured deeper into the recesses of human behavior than any university Psychology professor has ever been able to take me. This book is an absolute success precisely because it refuses to be constrained to only one man. And it works especially well because Nussinbaum the Chameleon, also refused to be only one person.

Reading the Orientalist, I am reminded yet again that life IS indeed stranger than fiction!

Kurban Said's life is a richly woven tapestry of geographies (one can see the broad horizons of the Caspian refion - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Persia merging with the bustling metropolises of Paris, Berlin and Istanbul) during such fascinating times (the bruatality of the Russian revolution in 1917, the bohemian life of the jazz age, the political and human uphevals and tragedies of the first and second World Wars) and bridging such different cultures (jewish, Muslim and Christian; industrealized societies and Asian mysticism; intellectual and literary pursuits and the struggles of an immigrant for personal and social identity).

There are perhaps a thousand stories distilled and beautifully narrated by Tom Reiss - the book can equally be a discourse on the history of the early XX century in Europe and the Middle East, as it can be a Dickensian novel about a person seeking his place in world. The masterfull work of Mr. Reiss brings Essad Bay to life; he appears in his full complexity, full of romanticism, and hope and dispear, a child of a place and time that bring about some of the most significant changes in recent human history.

Anyone interested in 20-th century history, as well as those who have loved "Ali and Nino" and those interested in the cultual milieu of the Middle East should consider this book an essential read.

Mr. Reiss' book could hardly have come at a better time - in an world of ever increasing global integration, yet full of religious strife and lack of tolerance and cultural understanding.

In the course of this biography, Lev Nussimbaum manages to show up in every exotic clime that can be imagined, from the oil-soaked landscape of Azerbaijan, to the cliff-side villages of the Amalfi Coast, and from deserts to drawing-rooms. Along the way he breaks bread with everyone from tribals to aristocrats, witnesses the turning-points of the century, and churns out reams of written material, including the still-in-print "Ali and Nino" - an inter-religious love story.

Lev Nussimbaum was a master of self-invention, self-aggrandizement, and self-interest who abhorred the mundane, and even managed to die of an exotic disorder that caused him to age before his time.

"The Orientalist," is a fascinating biography, filled with marvelous asides detailing the mores and manners of multiple cultures. I was left gasping for breath at the adventure, the romance, and the information; and wondering what someone like David Lean might have done with the movie version (will there be a movie version) of this story.

"The Orientalist," is a good read.

This story is unbelieveable, but for the extensive research that obviously backs it up. Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey/Kurban Said must have been a fascinating character and the many turns of his life make for a great story.

My only complaint, and the reason I've given it 4 stars instead of 5, is that it's simply too long. Most of the extra length is not Lev's story, but the extensive background that Reiss offers to set the stage for Lev's activities and life decisions. While some of the background gives necessary depth, in many places I found myself looking for where things get interesting again.

One periodically sees the question "who would you like to have dinner with, if you could pick anyone from the 20th century". After reading this book, I'd pick any of the three personas as one of the most fascinating eyewitnesses to history, and a great storyteller to boot.

When I was a teenager, I read all night under the covers using a flashlight. While I don't have to do that anymore, I stayed up very late, into the wee hours of the morning, reading The Orientalist. I know that superlatives get discounted, but still, this was one of the best books I've ever read.

My admiration for the author for figuring out that this life was worthy of a great book, is boundless. Yet, Lev was not a great person; in many respects he was a trickster. What struck me here was the sheer inventivness of this man and his ability to bring it off. But the value of the book for me was not only the illumination of the human spirit, but the history of the time in which he lived. In the end, I was touched by his death and the tragedy of his not entirely admirable life. I'm sure that there is a lesson here for me, but I'm not yet exactly sure what it is.
I very well might read The Orientalist again.

The only real question left after reading this biography is how did Tom Reiss come up with the idea to write this book? We are talking about a life that was so invented, that at some points the man in the middle had trouble keeping it all straight.

How to create an interesting life? Start by being the child of two Azchenzai Jews living in turn of the century Baku in Azerbaijan. Your dad is an oil speculator and millionaire and your mother (who committed suicide when you are a child and had protected Stalin during his exile) is reportedly a communist agitator. You spend your childhood being carried about by family retainors and learn to speak four languages.

At the age of 13, the world explodes in revolution and you escape across the Caspian Sea from the Reds and then through the desert to a Constantinople populated with Russian White Soldiers.
You go back home for a while and then have to escape again, ending up in Paris and then Berlin.

Staying in Paris is fun, but dad knows you need an education. So he ships you to an island Sanitarium in the North Sea where you are able to develop an alter ego (Essad Bey) who is an Central Asian princeling.

But, you need a more rounded education so dad sends you to Berlin. Well, that's OK, who doesn't want to be a penniless Jew in Germany in the late 1920's?

So now it starts to get interesting...at one point you are a famous "Asiatic" author of books about Stalin, Mohammed and Lenin as well as a world famous novelist. You marry an Austrian Baroness, move to America, live on Park Avenue.

You get divorced, go back to Berlin, and then Vienna and it's 1933. What me worry? I'm a muslim, it's only dangerous for Jews. Oops, somebody lets the cat out of the bag, you are a Jew, your real name is Leo Nussimbaum. So to get away from the Nazi's after 1938, you head for a safe haven, in Italy. Yup the facists will never look for you there. You get sick and die. Think your safe, not on your (erh..) life!

Your most famous book, "Ali and Nino" is attributed to everyone but you. It's the national book of Azerbaijan, and you couldn't have written it.. ok looks like things might get tough now. Whew.

THE ORIENTALIST is, very simply, one of the best books I've ever read.

The subject is fascinating--fascinating as well as weird. The center of this biography is a man who (probably) was named "Lev Nussimbaum" when he was born and who may have used the names of "Assad Bey" or "Kurban Said" in his lifetime.

Considering how extraordinary this man's life was, it is surprising that he fell into such great obscurity before author Tom Reiss re-examined his story.

As a combination of fate and circumstance, Nussimbaum/Bey found himself in Czarist Russia for the Revolution, in Paris as a White Russian, in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and, finally, in Italy as a refugee, trying to escape the Nazis.

His father was a Polish Jew who had relocated to oil-rich Baku at the far western reach of Imperial Russia (the place famous for creating the wealth of the Swedish "Nobel" family.) Lev, however, grew up to identify with the Islamic religion, then the prevalent religion of his remote corner of Czarist Russia.

He may have converted to Islam; he may not have converted. He may have given himself an honorary Islamic title; he may not have done this. He may have written the love story that is viewed as the Muslim equivalent of "Romeo and Juliet"--or he may not have written this book. His mother may have been a Russian revolutionary, a comrade of Stalin (who was from Baku) or she may not have been. Obviously, there are many mysteries surrounding Nussimbaum/Bey, most of which never will be resolved.

What is certain is that Nussimbaum/ Bey was a prolific and lyrical writer, an acknowledged success during his tenure in Berlin.

Author Tom Reiss has done amazing research here, scholarly and impeccable. Reiss' voice is assured, his prose is lively and compelling. In the process of explaining Lev's life, Reiss offers a cogent explanation of the geography of Eastern Europe and of the consequential politics of this region. He combines these explanations with an examination of the national borders of Eastern Europe, and the re-partitioning of those borders.

Even without the central theme of the book, Reiss' work here would be valuable, albeit unnecessary. Still, the pages devoted to this history should be required reading in any 20th Century college course.

Altogether, THE ORIENTALIST is a compelling read.

The Orientalist takes the reader through some of the great upheavals of the last 150 years, including the demise of the Russian Empire Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, both World Wars, the fate of the Russian Emigrees, the upheaval in Germany that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Reiss looks at these events through the eyes of young Lev Nussimbaum, and the story is remarkably fresh with a unique point of view. There are many side adventures in the Orientalist which I found fascinating and informative (the German enclave in Azerbaijan; the "Mountain Jews" of Azerbaijan, the society of Constantinople in the final days of the empire). All fascinating and fun reading.

But I had to let the fun of reading this type of book override the frustration I felt from the almost total absence of any source reference. Basically, the author is saying "trust me, the story I am weaving is not completely made up." And if it had not been for the fact that it is very well written and that the numerous subjects in the book are fascinating, I could not have stood it. At one point on P.186, there is a lengthy passage by D.H. Lawrence, but no attempt to advise the hapless reader where it came from. There are numerous references to individuals without assigning a name to them (the driver of the car responsible for the murder of Rathenau). There is an abundance of footnotes throughout the book, but the footnotes are equally free of any source reference or citation. I was not sure why they were there instead of in the main body of the text.

You might get the idea that I did not enjoy reading the Orientalist, or that I would not recommend it. But you would be wrong. I am just grumbling about the nature of this kind of writing, and it is a big risk for the author. It is more essay than anything else. There are other books out there like it, but not many. It is a distinctly journalistic style of telling a story, but it requires a great deal of faith from the reader. One such book is "The Africans" by David Lamb, also a journalist, written as a story, without facts to clutter things up. I liked that book too.


Another aspect of the book which I found frought with peril was the political one. The book is told from the perspective of the wealthy son of an Azeri oil magnate who longs for the days of Empire. The Bolshevik revolution is exploding around him as he and his father escape to Georgia, Constantinople, Paris, Berlin. The Bolsheviks are portrayed as mirror images of the Nazis, as the model used by Hitler for the entire Nazi movement. Many volumes have been devoted to this subject and will be in the future. I though it was one of the weaknesses of the book and too important a subject to be left as one of the side stories. Were the Communists the same as the Nazis? Did they really have the same agenda or point of origin? Was one the originator of the other? Did they both represent the same kind of evil? Was Stalin the same as Hitler? Was he worse? I found it unfortunate that the book answered these questions in the affirmative without reservation. For me, the answers to these big questions deserve their own library.

That's all. I still liked the book enough to give it 5 stars. Go read it and decide for yourself.

I envy Tom Reiss his gifts as a writer. Truly the fairies must have been out in full attendance at his birth, leaving behind in their wake so many of the important things one really needs to pull off a task of such magnitude. One fairy must have left little Tom the ability to research not only deeply, but laterally, so that we see no event without its full context, both historically and culturally. Another talent is the ability to summon up words andimages to bring whatever it is you're writing about to life, like a magic wand shedding light on its subject. Here we find out about the unhappy author Kurban Said, famous for a single novel, the heartbreaking romance ALI AND NINO, through the evidence of the things he touched and the things and people he left behind.

Reiss is a subjective writer, nearly a poet, as well as an objective one; he seems to have all of 20th century history at his fingertips. He must have used many charts just to keep track of the shifting borders and names of nations that have changed in our crazy century. Sometimes you feel that the thread of the narrative--Lev Nussimbaum himself--is not as important as the cultural movements he participated in, or those he fled. Sometimes we lose sight of Lev, a disappearing subject, behind the immense project of discerning who is resisting Communism. who is succumbing to nationalism, who is promoting modernism. But even in his ghostly manifestation, Kurban Said leaves his traces, and ALI AND NINO will always be one of those books that, once you've read it, you'll be wondering about the interior life of the man who wrote it.

THE ORIENTALIST is the product of some amazing encounters Reiss had, and he presents these with the glee and the awareness of magic we associate with a biographer like Richard Holmes. Reiss has erased Coleridge's distinction between "fancy" and "imagination" in this important work of cultural history.

The book was chosen by our book club. Out of the ten members only one finished the book. We all found it tedious.

I read this book with more than passing interest. My father was born in June 1905 and is living with me. He graduated from Columbia College in 1929. My father visited me in Iran in 1971 during my two years of Peace Corps service in Iran, 1970-72. He made another trip to Tabriz in 1973 via the RCD raiload link. I traveled through Quchan, Boojnoord, Gorgan, and Enzeli (Bandar-e Pahlavi). There is no mention in the book of the famed Orientalist, Joseph Wolf, 1795-1862. I am wondering why he was omitted? On p. 50 Reiss writes "...a pan-Turkic empire stretching from the Bosporus to Bukhara..." We must not forget that the Uighur Yakub Beg struck his gold tillas in Kashgar citing an an Ottoman overlord. On p. 71 a warship is encounterd on the Caspian; is this the renamed Karl Liebnicht which had shelled the British in Enzeli? An orientalist was defined as a scholar who had mastered the great literature in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish. Had Nussimbaum mastered Arabic as well as Azeri Turkish and Persian?

Excellent book, will teach you about how peaceful and multicultural some parts of the world were before tribalism took over.