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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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