Showing results by author "Tom Reiss" in All Categories

General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

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, 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.

"En vidunderlig beretning, smukt fortalt, fortryllende, gribende og naesten utrolig." The New York Times Historien om Lev Nussimbaum er så fantastisk, at man kunne tro, det var en roman. Men indholdet er fuldstaendig autentisk. Man fristes naesten til at kalde bogen for magisk realistisk non fiction. Lev Nussimbaum levede og døde som et udpraeget mysterium - et omvandrende menneskeligt paradoks med et vaeld af fascinerende og flamboyante personaer...

Es sollte ein Leben voller Spannungen und unerwarteter Wendungen werden, das den sensiblen jüdischen Jungen Lev Nussimbaum bis ins Berlin der Wilden Zwanziger Jahre führte...

Astonishing. Searingly honest with plenty of drama, it is the true story of a young life that promised much and delivered more that could ever have been envisaged until the bottom fell out of the author's world. From the realms of high finance and a chance encounter with the president to the comedic pathos of the participation in a football tournament as an inpatient of a psychiatric facility.