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'Dadash Beg has stabbed Achung Sade to death last week, because Achung Sade came back to town although he knew the danger, having kidnapped Dadash Beg's wife eight years ago. He was stabbed on the day he came. Now the police are looking for Dadash Beg. But they won't find him, although everybody knows that he is in the village of Mardakjany. Wise men say Dadash Beg has done well.'

I have never heard of this book before and didn't know that they turned it into a movie two years ago. My book club is reading this while we are "visiting" Azerbaijan. I have just read Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook and last year Leila Aboulela's The Kindness of Enemies, which is set for the most part in the Caucasus region. Thanks to these books, I had some basic knowledge about the diversity of the region and a tiny little bit of historical background. If I hadn't, I would have been lost!

As mentioned in the title, Ali and Nino is a love story. Ali is a Shiite Muslim Azerbaijani, who loves the desert and the sand. Nino is from an aristocratic Greek Orthodox family from Georgia. They live in Baku, which is today known as Azerbaijan's capital city. The city is also inhabited by Christian Armenians, Persians, Turks, Indians, Russians and whatnot. The story is set around the 1st World War and the state of the nation isn't exactly determined yet. On the one hand, there's the perpetual threat of the big neighbor, Russia. On the other hand, there's Turkey, who are Sunni Muslim (not exactly the same with Shia Islam, which is mainly found in Iran) and killing Armenians. How can Ali and Nino's inter-religious relationship survive in such a chaotic political climate, in the midst of Europe's and Asia's boundary?

First of all, I was very surprised to find how light and funny the tone of the narration was. Sometimes it felt like a contemporary novel and not something that was published in 1937 by a mysterious writer, whose identity is still in dispute. There are really a lot of parts, where I laughed and thought that the humor was very original and heart-warming. I learned a lot more about the Caucasus region, the oil that has already been extracted in Baku region around the time of the setting of the novel, the different people inhabiting the area and how they got along. I was also quite shocked how open Ali and Nino's love relationship was, which wasn't really barred by social conventions and beliefs. They are constantly torn between Europe and Asia, between Islam and Christianity, between the outside world and Baku.

If a reader is interested in learning more about this region, I recommend this book, because it's readable and informative with an interesting plot.

How marvelous, that we're in Asia, in wild, reactionary Asia! We have no smooth roads for Western cars here, just rough paths for Karabagh horses. how quickly can a car go on these roads, and how swiftly races a horse from Karabagh? The melons on the roadside look at me as if they had faces. 'Very bad road,' the melons are saying, 'not for English cars. Only for riders on Karabagh horses.'