The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
de Reiss, Tom
- Usado
- Muy bueno
- Tapa dura
- First
- Estado
- Muy bueno/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 1400062659
- ISBN 13
- 9781400062652
- Librería
-
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Formas de pago aceptadas
Sobre este artículo
New York: Random House, 2006. xxvii, 447 pages, illustrations; 24 cm. Near fine. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Age toning. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. Engrossing read, fascinating character. "Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist 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 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of 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. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino - a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust - is still in print today. But Lev's 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, George Sylvester Viereck - also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's - was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer - until the Fascists discovered his 'true' identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book - discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone - helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss's quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles. As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum'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. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book. / Tom Reiss has written about politics and culture for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughters in New York City." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.
Sinopsis
An extraordinary and hugely topical story of a Jewish man's passion for the Arab world.On the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world.Tom Reiss first came across Nussimbaum when he went to the ex-USSR to research Russia's oil reserves, 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 Kurban Said, its supposed author? And why did he and his book fade into obscurity?For five years, Reiss tracked Said's protean identity 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.
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Detalles
- Librería
- LEFT COAST BOOKS (US)
- Inventario del vendedor #
- 200280
- Título
- The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
- Autor
- Reiss, Tom
- Formato/Encuadernación
- Tapa dura
- Estado del libro
- Usado - Muy bueno
- Estado de la sobrecubierta
- Fine
- Cantidad disponible
- 1
- Edición
- 1st
- ISBN 10
- 1400062659
- ISBN 13
- 9781400062652
- Editorial
- Random House
- Lugar de publicación
- New York
- Fecha de publicación
- 2006
- Tamaño
- 8vo
- Palabras clave
- Collectible
- Catálogos del vendedor
- Genre & Subject / Religious / Judaica; Middle Eastern / Arabic & Persian; Genre & Subject / Orientalism;
Términos de venta
LEFT COAST BOOKS
Sobre el vendedor
LEFT COAST BOOKS
Sobre LEFT COAST BOOKS
Glosario
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- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...