On the surface this is a biography of an enigmatic man named Lev Nussinbaum who lived through the turbulent first four decades of the twentieth century. Lev was the jewish son of an oil millionaire from Baku, Azerbaijan. While the Bolshevik revolution forced he and his father to flee westward, eventually to Germany, he always identified with Central Asia, and Islam. He re-invented himself several times, usually masquerading as an Arabian prince. He became a famous author of the time under the name Essad Bey, writing both fiction and non-fiction. Some of his equally famous contemporaries are still household names, while Lev A.K.A. Essad A.K.A. Kurbin Said has been mostly forgotten.

I'm not sure I found Lev's life quite as facinating as I was suppose to. It took me a long time to read this book, although this might have something to do with my 19 month old son. Suffice to say, it was not a page turner. What I did find fascinating was the extent of my ignorance. I enjoy history, yet I found I had no real comprehension of how brutally disruptive post WWI events were on much of the world. This book gave me a great deal of insight into how the red scare in the U.S. came about. The seemingly paranoid vision of communism sweeping over the world and obliterating it, had some basis in reality, as that is what happened in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. I also realized that growing up in a post creation of Isreal world, we have a tendency to assume certain things about the relations between Muslims and Jews. I didn't realize how these two cultures were seen by so many as connected and similar, almost like the U.S. and Canada.

All in all this is a book that definitely expanded my mind, but was rarely captivating.