The Orientalist

The Orientalist is the only book I have purchased this year, from a used book shop in Ann Arbor, and as the result of not having a CADL due date staring at me each time I opened it, it took me several months to get around to reading it. Perhaps that is a shame, since this is one of the most intricately woven, intensely researched books I've had the pleasure of reading this year.

So much about this book impressed me, but nothing more than the way Tom Reiss wove together so many seemingly disparate stories. These stories encompass the series of Russian revolutions, the creation of the Pale, the desert histories of Persia and its re-emergence as Iran, the morphing of the Ottoman Empire into Turkey and the end of the caliphate, the history of mountain Jews in the Caucuses, and ultimately the Machiavellian view in Western Europe and the U.S. that Nazism be, for lack of a better word, embraced in order that Communism and the "red menace" of the Bolsheviks spread no further west. The research and crafting of these histories alone is an immense undertaking, but none of them is the primary story of The Orientalist.

That is the story of world-renowned author Leo (Lev) Nussimbaum, aka Essad Bey, aka Kurban Said and his remarkable life. From a childhood in Baku, Azerbaijan, at the time of the Russian revolution, to death in Fascist, WWII Italy, he seems to have witnessed every major event of the first four decades of the twentieth century. Understanding that only 10 years after his death John Steinbeck was not familiar with him, Nussimbaum/Bey/Said helps frame the sheer amount of detective work Reiss undertook to bring this project to fruition. In addition to being beautifully written and seamlessly crafted (no small feat considering the number of intertwined stories), Reiss does an exquisite job of relaying his own experience researching and writing the book, his interviews with numerous quirky characters, his dogged hunt for documents large and small, and the surprises along the way.