Том Риис — новинки

So how did such this extraordinary man get erased by history? Why are there no statues of ‘Monsieur Humanity’ as his troops called him? The Black Count uncovers what happened and the role Napoleon played in Dumas’s downfall. By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti to the Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto – Reiss, like the novelist before him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero.

Том-Александр Дюма, будучи сыном чернокожей рабыни и французского аристократа, сделал головокружительную карьеру в армии, дослужившись до звания генерала. О том, как генерал Дюма лично отбил шесть знамён у численно превосходящего противника, а под Мантуей остановил целую армию, в своих письмах писал сам Наполеон. Впрочем, близкая дружба с Бонапартом сыграла с Дюма злую шутку – император не смог смирится с популярностью генерала. Алекс Дюма был заточён в крепость, откуда чудом спасся. Позже многие из приключений отца вдохновили Александра Дюма на написание «Графа Монте-Кристо».

Это одно из тех жизнеописаний, на фоне которых меркнут любые приключенческие романы. Перед вами биография Тома-Александра Дюма, отца и деда двух знаменитых писателей, жившего во времена Великой французской революции. Сын чернокожей рабыни и французского аристократа сделал головокружительную карьеру в армии, дослужившись до звания генерала. Революция вознесла его, но она же чуть не бросила его под нож гильотины. Он был близок Наполеону, командовал кавалерией в африканской кампании, пережил жесточайшее поражение, был заточен в крепость, чудом спасся, а перед смертью успел написать свою биографию и произвести на свет будущего классика мировой литературы. К тому же Александр Дюма никогда не скрывал, кто был настоящим прообразом графа Монте-Кристо и чья история вдохновляла его всю жизнь.

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in…

Биографический роман американского журналиста Тома Рииса посвящен Льву Нусимбауму, бакинскому еврею, принявшему ислам, авантюристу и писателю, издававшему свои книги под псевдонимами Курбан Сайд и Эсад-бей. Его главный роман "Али и Нино", бестселлер 1930-х годов, пережил второе рождение в 1970-е и был переведен на сорок языков мира. Однако до расследования Тома Рииса настоящее имя человека, который скрывался под стоящим на обложке книги псевдонимом Курбан Сайд, оставалось неизвестным. На примере одной жизни, "исполненной тайн и опасностей", Риис описывает распад Российской империи, судьбы эмиграции в Стамбуле и Берлине, становление фашизма…

Tom Reiss first came across Nussimbaum when he went to the ex-USSR to research Russia's oil reserves, and discovered a novel instead. Written on the eve of the Second World War, "Ali and Nino" is a captivating love story set in the glamorous city of Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. The novel's depiction of a lost cosmopolitan society is enthralling, but equally intriguing is the identity of the man who wrote it. Who was Kurban Said, its supposed author? And why did he and his book fade into obscurity? For five years, Reiss tracked Said's protean identity from a wealthy Jewish childhood in Baku, to a romantic adolescence in Persia on the run from the Bolsheviks, and an exile in Berlin as bestselling author and self-proclaimed Muslim prince. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth-century - of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism.

"Lev Nussimbaum was a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a bestselling author in Nazi Germany. Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution became celebrated throughout fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino - a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust - is still in print today." "But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his real identity - until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck, also a friend of Freud's and Einstein's, was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer - until the Fascists uncovered his true origins. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book - scrawled in tiny print in half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone - helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound." "Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker magazine, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal - and sometimes as heartbreaking - as his subject's life." As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds - of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists - that have also been forgotten.