Marvelously written, and imbued with scholarly thinking on a forgotten tradition of Jewish-Islamic accord.
The intriguing search for the true identity of a 1930s cult novelist (published here, by Random, in 1971) whose obscure working life was based entirely on escapist subterfuge.
Readers who wonder why they would want to follow Reiss through a convoluted trek in the footsteps of one Kurban Said (also writing as Essad Bey), author of the still celebrated 1937 romance (published here, by Random, in 1971) entitled Ali and Nino—star-crossed lovers embracing across the gulf between Islam and Christianity—need only take a step or two into the setup. After an introductory blind alley in which a German baroness is falsely identified to Reiss as the real author of Said’s works, he gives us turn-of-the century Baku on the Caspian Sea, where petroleum leaks out of the ground in profusion and Russia’s soon-to-be oil millionaires are arriving daily along with the same camel caravans that have passed this way for a thousand years. There, Reiss’s account of the real Kurban Said begins with the 1905 birth of one Lev Nussimbaum to the Jewish oil Minister of Baku and his wife, a woman from an obscure Russian village who harbors Revolutionary tendencies. Comes the Revolution, the comfortable haut capitaliste milieu of Baku implodes around the teenaged Nussimbaum and, as usual, when things turned bad for Russians they turned worse for Jews. Skipping forward, one finds Lev ensconced in a seething Germany, hobnobbing with nascent Nazis as a self-vested Muslim prince, author, and Orientalist—one steeped in the mysteries and cultures of Asia Minor, the Levant, etc.—known as Kurban Said. Further, his pose incorporates denial of his mother’s Jewishness, making her a Russian noblewoman (false) who sold her diamonds to finance Stalin’s—then Josef Dugashvili—rise to power (probably true) and committed suicide by drinking acid. Nussimbaum eventually married an heiress who never knew his real identity; he died tragically in Mussolini’s Italy.
Marvelously written, and imbued with scholarly thinking on a forgotten tradition of Jewish-Islamic accord.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6265-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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