In Search of a Man caught between East and West

The Orientalist

An extraordinary and hugely topical story of a Jewish man's passion for the Arab world, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

A wonderous tale, beautifully told...mesmerising, poignant and almost incredible

Meticulous and fascinating... Inspiring reading

Extraordinary on many counts... It has taken the tireless detective work of Tom Reiss to uncover the real Lev Nussimbaum

A highly entertaining biography of a very unusual person

A highly enjoyable mingling of scholarship and sleuthing that elegantly solves the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers

A remarkable story of East meeting West, and the fantastic historical figure who stood astride both worlds, during an almost equally fantastic moment in time. This is history and biography that reads like a great novel

He has a sharp eye for incongruities, and peppers the book with entertaining footnotes

Born in 1964, Tom Reiss is an American author and journalist who lives in New York. He is the author of The Orientalist, an acclaimed biography of Lev Nussimbaum (aka Kurban Said) which was shortlisted for the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize; and The Black Count, a book about the real Count of Monte Christo.

The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. 
 
Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself 'Kurban Said' when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, 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 its supposed author? And why was he so forgotten that no one could agree on the simplest facts about him? 
 
For five years, Reiss tracked Lev Nussimbaum, alias Kurban Said, 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.

Tom Reiss

Richly detailed, highly researched and completely absorbing... A triumph

Totally thrilling... Brings to life one of history's great forgotten characters

We believe we know the glories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. We believe we understand the horror of slavery and the oppression of Africans. But what is the relationship between the grand goal of liberation and the deep tragedy of racism? As Reiss shows us, answers can be found in the extraordinary life of a forgotten French hero of the great revolutionary campaigns - a hero who was black

Tom Reiss can do it all: gather startling research and write inspired prose; find life's great stories and then tell them with real brilliance. In The Black Count the master journalist-storyteller opens the door to the truth behind one of literature's most exciting stories, and opens it wide enough to show the delicate beauty of the lives within

Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award winning author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng

A terrific story…(Reiss) is to be congratulated for retrieving such a splendid character from the dustbin of history

A terrific story, every bit as good as one of Dumas’s novels, and Reiss tells it with suitable gusto and swagger

A rarefied, intimate literary study delineating a roiling revolutionary era

Brilliant… Reiss directs a full scale production that jangles with drawn sabres, trembles with dashing deeds and resonates with the love of a son for a remarkable father

Richly imaginative… In 1802, Marie-Louise gave birth to their third child, Alexandre, Dumas pere. That Alexandre was a figure of vast appetite and incredible energy, but thanks to Reiss we now know that Dumas grandpere was even more interesting. A statue in his honour once stood in the Place Malesherbes in Paris, but it was destroyed by the Nazis since it celebrated a man of mixed race. There still isn’t a monument to him, but there should be

A cross between military biography and literary detective story…the author’s eye for colourful detail and palpable enthusiasm for his subject make for a highly entertaining read

Heartfelt…highly readable…relentlessly, lovingly researched, indexed, cross-referenced and anecdotal. It is sustained by the author’s admiration for a singular individual, the brilliant father of a novelist whose subject was heroism and justice, the concepts by which his beloved sire had lived

A fascinating tale even more incredible than those penned by his famous son… Reiss writes his history with a suitably swashbuckling edge and brings to life a man who deserves to be remembered in his own right

This brilliantly researched book…deserves a film treatment all of its own

Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2013 
 
‘Completely absorbing’ 
Amanda Foreman 
 
'Enthralling’ 
Guardian 
 
‘The Three Musketeers! The Count of Monte Cristo! The stories of course 
are fiction. But here a prize-winning author shows us that the inspiration for 
the swashbuckling stories was, in fact, Dumas’s own father, Alex - the son 
of a marquis and a black slave... He achieved a giddy ascent from private 
in the Dragoons to the rank of general; an outsider who had grown up 
among slaves, he was all for Liberty and Equality. Alex Dumas was the 
stuff of legend’ 
Daily Mail 
 
So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are 
there no statues of ‘Monsieur Humanity’ as his troops called him? The 
Black Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played in 
Dumas’s downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti to 
the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto – Reiss, like the novelist 
before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. 
 
‘Entrances from first to last. Dumas the novelist would be proud’ 
Independent 
 
‘Brilliant’ Glasgow Herald

Tom Reiss

Praise for The Black Count

Richly detailed, highly researched and completely absorbing... A triumph

Totally thrilling... Brings to life one of history's great forgotten characters

We believe we know the glories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. We believe we understand the horror of slavery and the oppression of Africans. But what is the relationship between the grand goal of ...

Richly detailed, highly researched and completely absorbing... A triumph

Totally thrilling... Brings to life one of history's great forgotten characters

We believe we know the glories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. We believe we understand the horror of slavery and the oppression of Africans. But what is the relationship between the grand goal of ...

Richly detailed, highly researched and completely absorbing... A triumph

Totally thrilling... Brings to life one of history's great forgotten characters

We believe we know the glories of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. We believe we understand the horror of slavery and the oppression of Africans. But what is the relationship between the grand goal of ...

Books by Tom Reiss

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter