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Loading... The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (original 2005; edition 2006)by Tom Reiss
Work InformationThe Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss (2005)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This was absolutely one of the best books I’ve ever read. And definitely the best book that I’ve read in the last two years. Ostensibly, the book is the story of a deliberately obscure author who is born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and as the antebellum World War I falls apart, flees to Constantinople, then Berlin, and after a short period in New York City, to Vienna and after the Anschluss to Positano, Italy, where he dies as age 35. In reality, the book is the story both of a turbulent era, and a region of the world that fuses East and West. Even though I consider myself a serious history buff, the book was mostly information with which I was not familiar. As usual I have a quibble but that didn't keep it from a "five." I occasionally had to retrace some of my reading to remind myself of who people were that did not seem important at first mention. I highly recommend reading this book. Essad Bey was a best selling author in the 1920s and 30s. He wrote in Germany in German after escaping the Russian Revolution with his father in 1918. Who was he? The author Tom Reiss looks into that question in this book, The Orientalist:Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life. Essad Bey was born Lev Nussimbaum in Central Asia. He reinvented himself as a Muslim prince. He wrote 16 best selling books including Blood and Oil. He died in poverty in Italy in 1942 while avoiding the authorities who would have sent him to a concentration camp because in spite of his invented personality he really was a Jew. The is a lot of information packed into this 400 page book. Now I have to seen Blood and Oil. Fascinating story of the classic tragic hero who wanted a life bigger and brighter than his own which in truth wavered between the unbelievable/impossible and the realities of Nazi Europe. Are people who they say they are, or who they want to be? Leo/Lev Nussimbaum was born to Jewish parents in October 1905, but presented himself as a Muslim aristocrat of Persian and Turkic heritage, or whatever he felt was most advantageous to him given his geographic, economic and political circumstance. What is true is that he was the author of Blood and Oil in the Orient and Ali and Nino, as well as dozens of other works, while surviving in one of the greatest war zones in one of history's most volatile times. He died at the age of 36, impoverished, in Positano. Read this book also if you're interested in the history of Judaism, early Nazi Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the oil industry -- late 19/early 20C -- or fraud versus imagination, survival versus ambition. no reviews | add a review
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This book 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 in Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found 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. But his 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 was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. He was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer--until the Fascists discovered his "true" identity. Under house arrest, he wrote his last book, helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. As he tracks down the pieces of Lev'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. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)833.912Literature German literature and literatures of related languages German fiction Modern period (1900-) 1900-1990 1900-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The Jewish Orientalist is left to choose between the bolshevik's, after seeing them mow people down in the streets and empty his home town and the Nazi's, who seem to promise order and peace.
Then, when that doesn't work out, he flees to the fascists, again seeking order and peace.
An interesting if tragic life
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