Re posted from 5/1/10
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A Mavi Boncuk reader has left a new comment on my seven year old post "About the Life and Works of Essed Bey" which prompted me to give it a new spin. Blog and Learn they say. So true.
Mavi Boncuk |
A Mavi Boncuk reader has left a new comment on my seven year old post "About the Life and Works of Essed Bey" which prompted me to give it a new spin. Blog and Learn they say. So true.Mavi Boncuk |
Ali and Nino: A Love Story is an adventure romance published under the pseudonym Kurban Said. In Azerbaijan this novel has been attributed to Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli[1], prominent Azeri writer and public figure whose works and life parallel the issues in the novel. The book was first published [2]in German in Vienna in 1937, by E.P. Tal Verlag. An Italian edition, Ali Khan, appeared in 1944 under the name Essad Bey, Nussimbaum's pen name. Strangely, in this edition, Nino is called "Erika," the name of Lev's wife who had ran off with Essad Bey's colleague, Rene Fülöp-Miller, in a scandalous divorce (1935).
This Italian edition was published posthumously under suspicious conditions by Essad Bey's drug dealer Vacca Bello who called himself "Ahmed Giamil Vacca-Mazzara" and tried to prove that he was Essad Bey's only living descendent, and therefore, inheritor of his royalties.
[1] Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli (12 September 1887, Shusha – 3 January 1943, near Gorky), was an Azerbaijani writer and political figure. After Sovietization, Chamanzaminli left for France where his younger brother Mir Abdulla was studying at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. After Mir Abdulla's sudden death, Chamanzaminli applied for a permission to return to Azerbaijan SSR, and was granted it in 1926. Upon his return, he taught languages at Azerbaijani colleges and translated works of Russian writers into Azeri. He took part in the compiling of the 1934 edition of the Russian-Azeri Dictionary. In 1937 he was laid off for unclear reasons and arrested in 1940. Condemned on fabricated charges, he was exiled to the prisoners camp in the Sukhobezvodnaya station, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, where he died three years later.
[2] Azerbaijan International Editor Betty Blair's Note: Since 2004 more research has been carried that shows that Essad Bey (Lev Nussimbaum) did not know a lot about the Caucasus. He invariably copied other people's work or enhanced other people's manuscripts. Ali and Nino is such a book as well. Research shows that the original ideas belong to Azerbaijani writer Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli and that Essad Bey enhanced passages, particularly sections related to folklore.
Essad Bey is not the core writer of the novel Ali and Nino. The paper trail leads to Chamanzaminli.
See research to support these statements in Azerbaijan International 15.2-15.4: "Ali and Nino: The Business of Literature. Who Wrote Azerbaijan's Most Famous Novel?"
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This Italian edition was published posthumously under suspicious conditions by Essad Bey's drug dealer Vacca Bello who called himself "Ahmed Giamil Vacca-Mazzara" and tried to prove that he was Essad Bey's only living descendent, and therefore, inheritor of his royalties.
[1] Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli (12 September 1887, Shusha – 3 January 1943, near Gorky), was an Azerbaijani writer and political figure. After Sovietization, Chamanzaminli left for France where his younger brother Mir Abdulla was studying at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. After Mir Abdulla's sudden death, Chamanzaminli applied for a permission to return to Azerbaijan SSR, and was granted it in 1926. Upon his return, he taught languages at Azerbaijani colleges and translated works of Russian writers into Azeri. He took part in the compiling of the 1934 edition of the Russian-Azeri Dictionary. In 1937 he was laid off for unclear reasons and arrested in 1940. Condemned on fabricated charges, he was exiled to the prisoners camp in the Sukhobezvodnaya station, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, where he died three years later.
[2] Azerbaijan International Editor Betty Blair's Note: Since 2004 more research has been carried that shows that Essad Bey (Lev Nussimbaum) did not know a lot about the Caucasus. He invariably copied other people's work or enhanced other people's manuscripts. Ali and Nino is such a book as well. Research shows that the original ideas belong to Azerbaijani writer Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli and that Essad Bey enhanced passages, particularly sections related to folklore.
Essad Bey is not the core writer of the novel Ali and Nino. The paper trail leads to Chamanzaminli.
See research to support these statements in Azerbaijan International 15.2-15.4: "Ali and Nino: The Business of Literature. Who Wrote Azerbaijan's Most Famous Novel?"
