Ali and Nino

"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. 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."

"This is another type of book. It isn’t about Georgia but it’s about the South Caucasus and the history and the background, the mixture of nationalities and religions and culture, which now a lot of political forces try to change into uni-ethnic states or areas, which I think is a real pity. But for most of history, this area was very multicultural. This is the story of a guy and a girl from different ethnic and religious groups falling in love, and all these types of problems, but the background and the surroundings of the story give it real depth. When you come to Tbilisi, you think it’s a completely Georgian city, but a few decades ago – and especially 100 years ago – there were more Armenians in Tbilisi than Georgians, and there were Jews and lot of North Caucasian tribes: the Circassians, the Persians, Arabs, Russians and Turks who have overwhelmed Georgia in the past and left small parts of their population there. There was an enormous mixture. We have these problems in another way in Western Europe today, but basically such a multitude could be very creative, and this book reminds us of this background and gives us an insight into the problems of a multitude of different nationalities in close proximity."

"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. 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. 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."