I’ve just finished Tom Reiss’s outstanding and truly gripping work of biographical scholarship: The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life. I got it after finishing Ali and Nino, by “Kurban Said,” aka “Essad Bey,” aka “Lev Nussimbaum.” Ali and Nino, much of which is set in Baku, was given to me there by my friend Tural. It’s a brilliant book. Another young Azeri just brought me three copies in Russian for some friends and I am currently reading it in a German edition (the language in which it was written) that I bought when I was in Germany recently. My advice: read Ali and Nino before reading The Orientalist.
I should add that not only are these two books deeply interesting for what they say about identity, about love, and about other matters, but both are very much about liberty, about the terrible destructiveness of totalitarian socialism, and about one man’s doomed search for freedom during one of the most confusing, dangerous, and murderous periods in recent history.