The Orientalist : solving the mystery of a strange and a dangerous life / Tom Reiss.
Material type: TextPublication details: New York : Random House, ©2005Edition: 1st edDescription: xxvii, 433 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmISBN: 1400062659; 9781400062652Subject(s): Said, Kurban, 1905-1942 | Authors, German -- 20th century -- BiographyAdditional physical formats: Online version:: Orientalist.LOC classification: PT2637.A433 | Z87 2005PT2637.A433 | Z87 2005Online resources: Sample text | Contributor biographical information | Publisher description Also issued online.Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Martha's Vineyard High School Library | 921/SAID (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 39844400129512 |
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921/SAB The cat I never named : a true story of love, war, and survival / | 921/SAC Path to the Pacific : | 921/SAE Americanized : | 921/SAID The Orientalist : | 921 SAR Climate champions : 15 women fighting for your future / | 921/SCH The end of your life book club / | 921/SCH Oskar Schindler : |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-411) and index.
Revolution -- Wild Jews -- The way east -- Escape -- Constantinople, 1921 -- Minarets and silk stockings -- The German revolution -- The Berlin wall -- A hundred kinds of hunger -- Weimar media star -- Jewish Orientalism -- Backing into the inferno -- A tough morsel for the melting pot -- Mussolini and Mrs. Kurban Said -- Positano.
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.
Also issued online.
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