Ali and Nino

Kurban Said

Scarce first UK edition. Hutchinson, London, 1970. Translated by Jenia Graman, introduction by John Wain. Hardcover, 237pp. Blue cloth binding is perfect but some slight shelfwear. Toning on endpapers from dust jacket flaps. Dust jacket lovely and bright with shelfwear. Priceclipped. Back flap creased from previous fold. An incredibly influential novel, widely read and translated into hundreds of languages, which authorship was debated for decades. Originally published in 1937 in Vienna, it was translated from the original German for the first time for this edition. Ali & Nino is set in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and explores the relationship between a Muslim Azerbaijani boy and a Christian Georgian girl, and the background cultural and political forces that affect their lives. The most supported theory of authorship is that Lev Nussimbaum wrote it under the pen name Kurban Said, but it's still disputed. Nussimbaum's authorship would imbue the book with a lot complexity. Jewish by birth, Nussimbaum converted to Islam in adulthood, and after escaping Azerbaijan under Bolshevik rule to Berlin, he made a career writing about "orientalist" topics. His perspective on these topics was highly contested by experts and his political views were at best complicated; he was a Monarchist, anti-Bolshevik and had some ties with early Nazism, although he ends up running from the Nazi regime himself. What is incontestable is that a woman German artist, Jenia Graman, is the one we owe the rediscovery and translation to English of Ali and Nino.