In an interview on Azerbaijan

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said (Yusif Vasir Chamanzaminli).

I only came across this book last year. It was a bestseller in Europe in the 1970s and was first published in German. I read it in Russian translated from the German and was highly moved by this masterpiece. It’s set in Baku, with a few chapters in different regions of the Caucasus and Iran, and shows the world’s relationship with Azerbaijan – Azerbaijan’s relationship with Russia, Europe and the Caucasus, from the British invasion in 1918 to the Russians. It’s a novel, and really it’s a love story between a young Muslim Azeri man and a Christian Georgian woman and it’s full of historical, cultural, political facts. The book is full of humour and very easy to read. It’s a real adventure, full of heroism and love. I learnt more about my own history from this book than from many others. The history of this book is more mystical and intriguing than the text itself. It’s written by the famous Azerbaijani writer Yusif Vasir Chamanzaminli, but, despite the proved evidence, the popularity of this book and lost original handwritten text created an opportunity for many attempts at claiming authorship of it. The main character is from the nobility, a khan family, and he goes to school at the Russian gymnasium. He describes so much of the Muslim tradition, simple things.

What happens to the lovers?

They get married. At that time Azerbaijan was an interesting place to be with rich traditions; people were well-educated in high society and had liberal views. The book opened up my eyes to that period in the region and made me realise how developed it was then already. There is also a lot of detail about the Red Army and its brutality. From the history books we had at school we were taught that people, apart from the bourgeoisie, were happy to surrender to the Red Army,  but it wasn’t true. The whole population was fighting to the last drop.

In an interview on Conflict in the Caucasus

Ali and Nino.

It’s a bit of a classic. The Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus. There’s actually a very interesting book by Tom Reiss about the author, who was a Baku Jew called Lev Nussimbaum.

Isn’t that disputed?

No, not any more. Tom Reiss got hold of original manuscripts and absolutely nailed it. Anyway, Nussimbaum converted to Islam and went to live in Germany in the 1930s and wrote some other books under the name Essad Bey, but this is by far his best book. And it’s this incredibly vivid (he uses caricature but it never becomes cartoon) novel about the Caucasus before the First World War, and you’re reminded that what happened in the 90s was a sort of repeat of what happened in the period between the First World War and the Bolshevik re-invasion of the Caucasus in 1920 – ethnic conflict, chaos, breakdown and foreign intervention. But then you’ve got the love story between Ali, the Azeri Muslim, and Nino the Georgian and how they come from two different worlds but how their worlds meet in the city of Baku, this cosmopolitan city.

When did it stop being cosmopolitan?

Baku was always vulnerable to conflict and conflict tore it apart in that era. It managed to get back together again in the Soviet era but then the war with the Armenians happened in 1990 and the Armenians, Russians and Jews all left. It has lost its cosmopolitan feeling over the past 20 years. But the thing about Ali and Nino is that every page has its laugh out loud delights: the stereotype of the Georgian cousins who try to kill you with their hospitality and the Armenian who drives over a bridge and says: ‘This bridge was built by my ancestors and Alexander the Great drove over it.’ And Ali looks at the inscription and it says, ‘Built in 1880’. No one gets off lightly. It’s a sheer delight.