Tom Reiss · 2005 · overland

Tom Reiss's 2005 biography reconstructs the astonishing life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew from Baku who reinvented himself as a Muslim prince and bestselling author under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said. Fleeing revolution as a boy, he crossed a collapsing world of empires and ended in Mussolini's Italy. A dazzling detective story of a life and an age. The route follows his long exile across Eurasia.

1. 1
   Baku

   Lev Nussimbaum is born into the oil wealth of Baku, a cosmopolitan boomtown on the Caspian where East and West collide.

2. 2
   Krasnovodsk

   When revolution and massacre engulf the city, the family flees east across the Caspian by steamer to the Turkmen shore.

3. 3
   Bukhara

   On across the Central Asian deserts to Bukhara, the boy already dreaming himself an Oriental prince.

4. 4
   Tehran

   The way blocked, they turn south through Persia, the boy already dreaming himself into another identity.

5. 5
   Istanbul

   To Constantinople and the wreck of the Ottoman world, a refugee among refugees.

6. 6
   Berlin

   On to Weimar Berlin, where he reinvents himself as Essad Bey, Muslim man of letters, and becomes a literary sensation.

7. 7
   Vienna

   Through Vienna as the shadow of fascism lengthens and his invented selves grow ever more perilous.

8. 8
   Positano

   To the cliffs of Positano in Mussolini's Italy, where, stateless and forgotten, he dies young under the name Kurban Said.