Ali and Nino is almost certainly result of this relationship. After Hitler seized power, Nussimbaum fled Berlin for still-independent Austria where an intense friendship with Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, her family, and her circle, developed. These books were published in London and New York under the name Essad Bey, the name he had taken in his youth when he converted to Islam. Nussimbaum completed his studies there, became a journalist and later wrote books about Mohammed, Nikolas II, Lenin, Reza Shah Pahlevi and regional geo-political issues. Nussimbaum's father took Lev and perhaps a German governess to Berlin during the tumult of the Russian Revolution. Lev Nussimbaum-who possibly had the original idea for the novel-was Jewish, born in Baku in 1905. It was impossible for decades to identify the author behind the pseudonym, but it now seems clear that "Kurban Said" is a pseudonym for two different people- a woman, the baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, and a man Lev Nussimbaum. This one is by someone named Heinz Barazon: There is in fact a second afterward in the recent Anchor edition of Ali and Nino that in some ways contradicts the first. And it probably wasn't at all unusual for Azerbaijani Jews to convert to Islam in the early 1900s.īut wait. Lev Nussimbaum would likely have had many of the same life-experiences (albeit scaled down) as Kurban Said, the person he purported to be.
So the revelation might not be that dramatic. The novel is so informative and self-consciously Asiatic that you know it could only have been written by a brilliant outsider observing the society from a distance, and you guess, an exile." Reiss convincingly showed that Essad Bey - that is, Lev Nussimbaum - was the author of Ali and Nino. Now that's a backstory! Elsewhere, Theroux makes it clear that he believes Nussimbaum is most probably the single author of the novel: "Mr.
Reading through Paul Theroux's afterword to Ali and Nino, I saw this:īut how had this Central Asian come to write his book in German and publish it in Berlin? Was he an exile, and if so, was this a pen name? It turns out that it was indeed a pen name, possibly shared by two people, one an Austrian baroness, Elfriede Ehrenfels, and the other an emigre Jew from Azerbaijan, Lev Nussimbaum, who had converted to Islam and taken the name Essad Bey and lived in Berlin and Vienna. It's called the Montclair Book Center, and it turns out it's pretty good - three floors, two storefronts, new and used books, and surprisingly well organized.Īmong other things, I came across two novels by a writer I'd never heard of, Kurban Said. Friday is my non-teaching day, so I went down to Montclair to check out what I think is the nearest used bookstore to my current apartment.
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