The Orientalist

Oct 9, 2024 9:18 AM

Author:Tom Reiss

The Orientalist

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.

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

Fortune's act of agricultural espionage is the subject of Sarah Rose's fascinating book

—— The Tablet

Sarah Rose's For All the Tea in China is a gripping spy story, which brilliantly recounts how plant-hunter Robert Fortune committed one of the greatest acts of industrial espionage in history... Rose's account is superbly well written

—— Good Book Guide

In this lively account of the adventures (and misadventures) that lay behind Robert Fortune's bold acquisition of Chinese tea seedlings for transplanting in British India, Sarah Rose demonstrates in engaging detail how botany and empire-building went hand in hand

—— Jonathan Spence, author of THE SEARCH FOR MODERN CHINA

As a lover of tea and a student of history, I loved this book. Sarah Rose conjures up the time and tales as British Legacy Teas are created before our eyes. We drink the delicious results of Robert Fortune's adventures every day

—— Michael Harney, author of THE HARNEY & SONS GUIDE TO TEA

For All The Tea In China is a rousing Victorian adventure story chronicling the exploits of botanical thief Robert Fortune, who nearly single-handedly made the British tea industry possible in India. Sarah Rose has captured the thrill of discovery, the dramatic vistas in the Wuyi Mountains, and the near-disasters involved in Fortune's exploits. For tea-lovers, history buffs, or anyone who enjoys a ripping good read

—— Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

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