The Orientalist

Author Tom Reiss embarks on a search for the true identity of the early 20th century author Kurban Said, who wrote the miniature masterpiece novel “Ali and Nino.”

While many have tried through the years to unmask the real identity behind the pen name Kurban Said, Reiss apparently succeeded with “The Orientalist,” first published about 20 years ago.{br class=”zc-v4-fix” /}{br class=”zc-v4-fix” /}Here, Reiss provides hard evidence that Kurban Said is also the author Essad Bey which was also a pen name for Lev Nussimbaum.

Nussimbaum was born in 1905 in Baku to a Jewish oil-magnate father and a Bolshevik mother who committed suicide shortly after his birth. His mother’s death was only the beginning of the upheavals that marked Lev Nussimbaum’s childhood and youth.

Following the Russian revolution, Lev and his father had to desert their home. Their land and property were confiscated because of their wealth and because of the Nussimbaums’ Jewish heritage. Father and son wandered as refugees throughout areas of Europe. They were rich refugees, though, since many Europeans were willing to bank on the elder Nussimbaum’s confiscated oil fields under the mistaken belief, his and theirs, that the Soviet uprising would soon collapse and he could repossess his lands.

Meanwhile, Lev struggled for an identity. He also amassed experiences and a sensitivity which would make him a talented writer. As he grew to adulthood, he found that asserting an ambiguous identity opened doors and he also grew to admire a romanticized concept of both the Orient and the era’s toppling monarchies.

He assumed the name Essad Bey, claimed his father was a Muslim prince and began writing controversial books in Germany despite the growing anti-Semitism of that nation in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote mostly biographies and political works.

Many uncovered Bey’s true identity but he maintained his Oriental allure throughout numerous international newspaper reports, which often photographed him in Eastern garb and gave him a “Lawrence of Arabia” mystique. It was his wife, who proved the undoing of his Essad Bey identity.

Upon leaving him and then cavorting across Europe with another man, his wife told reporters that Essad Bey was all a contrivance.

She shared his true identity, heritage, status, even the suicide of his Bolshevik mother with the press. Lev went into hiding, in despair over the loss of his wife and the discovery of his true identity.

It was during this time, Reiss argues, that Lev began writing fiction under the name Kurban Said. He also started a memoir which chronicled the anguish of his wife’s betrayals and the rise of Nazism, what he considered the corruption of fascism, and the totalitarian crush of communism.

It also followed his slow descent into poverty and the gangrenous disease which painfully ate away at him leading to his death at the age of 35.

Reiss is methodical in proving that Nussimbaum/Bey is Said but he is also methodical in constructing the eras and areas which shaped him. Reiss provides many pages to the collapse of centuries-old empires; the struggles of Jews and Muslims in the Western world; the concept of the “Oriental”; the rise and transformation of Lenin-Stalin communism, Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazism; the publication scene of the 1920s and 1930s; as well as his search for people who knew the Nussimbaums, Essad Bey and “the Muslim” which became Lev’s identity in the Italian village where he died.

Though these are often fascinating details and revelations, these lengthy passages often interrupt to the point of destroying any type of well-paced narrative of Lev’s story and adventures. They do, however, go a long way in explaining the forces which shaped this man and his writings.

“The Orientalist” sounds like a remarkable adventure tale, and it is, but the romance of this self-styled romantic adventurer is often lost in the descriptions of the world which Lev spent a lifetime trying to escape.