Tom Reiss first came across Nussimbaum when he went to the ex-USSR to research Russia's oil reserves, 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 Kurban Said, its supposed author? And why did he and his book fade into obscurity? For five years, Reiss tracked Said's protean identity 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.

The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught Between East and West

Biographies & Memoirs

Tom Reiss

Arts & Literature

Vintage Books

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Community & Culture

BOOKS ON TAPE]

Once Ingo Hasselbach was a neo-Nazi, preaching racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-government terrorism. Now the 28-year-old founder and leader of the first neo-Nazi party in East Germany takes as his mission the prevention of others following the path of hate. In this eye-opening memoir, Hasselbach vividly exposes the violent movement he helped create--and tells why he left it behind. Photos.

Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi

Ingo Hasselbach

History

Random House]

FUHRER-EX. Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi.

Paperback - International Edition, January 1, 2005

Orientalist

Chatto and Windus

"I greatly enjoyed Tom Reisss' The Orientalist, for it mingled scholarship and sleuthing and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one of the 20th century's most mysterious writers.""Paul Theroux

The Orientalist

"Mixing memory with desire, this marvelous and original book once more reminds us of the ways through which the imagination becomes a refuge from the uncontrollable cruelties of reality." -Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran "I greatly enjoyed Tom Reiss's The Orientalist, for it's mingled scholarship and sleuthing, and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers." -Paul Theroux

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

RB Large Print

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. But, hidden behind General Dumas's swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave-who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution-until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count: Glory, revolution, betrayal and the real Count of Monte Cristo

Historical

HARVILL/SECKER

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Books by Tom Reiss