Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42329 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan at the beginning of World War I. Despite their religious and cultural differences they have loved each other since childhood, but their own tolerence does not protect them from others.

Customer Reviews

A hidden gem!,
An exellent book so well written it is such a shame it is still little known.

Kurban Said otherwise known as Essad Bey was an Azeri Jew who converted to Shia Islam, wrote a number of novels (and a biography of Muhammad under the name Essad Bey) lived in Russia for a time before living out the rest of his days in Central Europe. His life reflects much of the characters he wrote about and the complex world they lived in.

The novel is a love story between Ali an Azeri Shia of a noble family and Nino a Georgian christian. The story surrounds their lives growing up in the turbluant world leading up to World War 1. How their love brought them together but their cultures tore them apart.

The reason I put a brief biography of the author is that to know him is to understand how he could write with such insight into the various cultures of the Caucuses both Christian and Muslim. His insights into the Shia rituals such as Ashura, the culture of Iran and the hopeless decline of the Persian empre.

While the writer covers this so well I feel at times he does go a little overboard on the wole east Vs west and the whole emphasis on Christian Nino seeing Ali as some kind of 'romantic barbarian' is a little silly. The Georgian people are proud of their own wild rustic culture and the Persians are hardly some kind of Bedowin desert people.

Still, this book realy does capture the time so well, in a maner that other writers on that most beautiful of lands such as Tolstoy and Pushkin would be proud.

A fascinating romance set in early 20th C Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan in the early 20th century was at the crossroads of civilisations, cultures and religions. Set against this backdrop at the start of WWI is this love story of Ali, a desert loving-Muslim, and Nino, a Christian Georgian princess who yearns to be more European. Theirs is a childhood romance that eventually blossoms fully and they marry despite many obstacles put in their way. However it finally becomes clear that Ali's real love is for his country which can only lead to tragedy.
Ali and Nino is a rediscovered novel, written in the 1930s and published in Vienna, then found and translated into English in the 1950s. It gives a fascinating glimpse of what life was like amongst the ruling classes in this cultural melting pot; neighbour to Persia, but stuck between the warring Turks and Russians. With derring-do, glamour, philosophy, and romance, this novel has everything, but ultimately failed to totally grab me - maybe because of Ali's lack of ambition and liking of an easy life, until his patriotic awakening. It was a very good, but not quite brilliant read.

A unique love story from AZERBAIJAN
I loved this book. As a woman born in USSR in Azerbaijan (Baku) at the end of the 20th century I can relate to the sentiments and events described in the book more than most people unless they come from Baku like myself. It shows what a leap my country has made in the time since the era in which the book was written. Sadly this cannot be said about the rest of Caucasus.

I want to draw the line between Azerbaijan and Caucasus because the book describes the events which happened in Azerbaijan and not in the whole of Caucasus. There are hundreds of nationalities with their own unique traditions and history who rightly claim their own place in the world history, so the point I am making is that the book specifically relates to Azerbaijan (and to Georgia to some degree) but should not be projected to what may have been happening in the rest of the Caucasus at the time.