Blood and Oil in the Orient [Paperback]

Essad Bey (Author), Tom Reiss (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2008

An Autobiography like Something Out of the Arabian Nights In this lively and witty autobiography, Essad Bey, a.k.a. Lev Nussimbaum, tells us the story of his childhood in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and of his flight from the Russian Revolution in 1917, which brought him first straight through the Caucasus, then to Istanbul - where this book concludes - and finally to Berlin. When Essad Bey speaks of the people of the Caucasus and their customs so strange to us, a sort of anthropological cabinet of curiosities unfolds before our eyes, and we cannot help but be astonished. All the while, through his affectionate and sometimes openly ironic words, even the excesses of the Revolution sound like children's pranks and his hair-raising escape like an adventure novel. "Blood and Oil in the Orient" is an informative and entertaining book; in the 1930s, it was a bestseller in the U.S. and Germany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Bridges Publishing (January 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3929345366
• ISBN-13: 978-3929345360
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #603,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An autobiography (Of sorts!), July 20, 2009

By 

Gogol (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood and Oil in the Orient (Paperback)

Without giving too much away of this book this is an autobiography of Essad Bey (Also known by the name Kurban Said who wrote the book "Ali and Nino) Bey also wrote a biography of Muhammad and had officially converted to Islam in Istanbul in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.

Here in this book he traces a fantastic journey of his flight from Azerbaijan his native homeland back and forth across the Caucuses, Iran and Central Asia finally making his way to the West. Bey, describing himself as the son of an Azeri oil baron charters his journey meeting princes and kings along his way, rebels in the north of Iran, slaves and concubines.

The stories are almost certainly exaggerated (Armenian revolutionaries literally bathing in Azeri blood in the streets, Azeris encouraging the kids to bayonet Armenians in revenge) and designed to entertain a bohemian German audience of the 1920s-1930s but none the less they are fascinating and entertaining. For every exaggerated tale there is an ounce of truth to his tales and aside from Tom Reiss (Who by the way, aside from his soap box ranting and unashamed advertising of his book in the afterword contributes nothing to the book) and a few glaringly obvious type mistakes (Which considering the price of the book you would expect them to have checked (Or even Tom for that matter considering he is such an expert on Bey (Or Lev as he calls him)) This is an entertaining read.