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carlydw 's review for:
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Some spoilers, but not really. The final “A” country is Azerbaijan in the read around the world challenge I’ve set for myself. In looking for a book to read, the book Ali and Nino by Kurban Said came up as Azerbaijan’s unofficial official novel for the country, but then I saw this one - The Orientalist by Tom Reiss which is a biography on the author Lev Nussimbaum aka Essad Bey aka Kurban Said. It’s my first non-fiction book for this challenge and it was a doozy of a ride. Lev’s life is one that I’m not sure if this could take place the way it did in today’s world, but at the same time it is a story that does. Lev was born and spent his childhood in the city of Baku. His parents emigrated from Russia, and his father went on to invest in oil. Oil, by the way, which was in such quantities Baku was an extremely rich, cosmopolitan city, and a bridge of cultures, religions, and link to bring European fashions and ideas to the East. Due to multiple revolutions and uprisings in Russia, which affected Azerbaijan, along with Armenia and Georgia -there was a number of upheavals which led Lev and his father (his mother was deceased by this time) to start their never ending journey of becoming refugees and for most of their lives, stateless as Azerbaijan became eventually under Russia’s control during their lifetimes making their passports useless. This book follows their journey through Iran, Armenia, Turkey, France, and then settling for years in Germany - an odd destination for Jewish refugees in the time between WWI and WWII with the rise of Anti-Semitism and the Nazi party as they went from millionaire status to poverty and rich again, then to poverty again. It also follow’s Lev rising fascination with cultures, languages, and Jewish Orientalism - basically a cross of early Zionist and Eastern ideals that Jewish and Muslims were linked in the past and could have a harmonious future; Lev converted to Islam while in Germany. With the amount of books he published, news articles about him (and his millionaire wife and their scandalous divorce headlines) and the controversy that followed him, it is hard to believe his name is not well known. The book covers a lot of history and goes into the lives of the people he interacted with, so much so that if you’re not prepared for that, you may not like this book as much as some reviewers have mentioned. I truly appreciated the history as it covers a time and place in the world I’m not as familiar with, helps give context to how Lev could change so much in such a little time. It was a short life he led, dying at 35 years old, but amazing as well. Now onwards to the “B” countries.