欧宝娱乐

There is a large genre of novels related to WWI that deal in the heartbreak of "the last summer" before the storm, the coming death of the old world and the founding of the new (Le Grand Meulnes, which is still the quintessential French coming of age novel, is one example). The histories on this theme are scarcely less legion.

This novel is both a part of that genre and so much more than that. It is told from the first person perspective of Ali Khan Shirvanshir, who has turned a request from the town gossip to "write down what a hero's feelings are," into a personal diary. Ali Khan is a Muslim growing up in Baku, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, in what is at the time a Russian possession. He is in love with Nino Kipiani, a Georgian Christian who becomes a Georgian Princess through the courtesy of the Czar. If you're thinking that this will turn out to be a typical star-crossed lovers meet at garden walls and ne'er dare speak their love, you'd be wrong. For this is a melting pot of a society, an oil-boom town, where Georgians, Armenians, Westerners, Persians and Muslims (who, interestingly, are the group referred to by their religion, not their nationality- they are called "Mohammedans") all mix together. Everyone does have a place, but there are many factors which factor into deciding who matters, who is where on the social scale- schooling, family, money, and family history.

No, the book focuses on the much more interesting task of how one makes a cross-cultural life in a world that is becoming ever more divided along every line possible- religion, politics, economics, and of course the powerful new god of Nationalism.

This is, more than anything else, a meditation on definitions, explanations, lines and musings on Who I Am and Who I Am Not, and perhaps more importantly for geopolitics, Who We Are and Who We Are Not. Ali visits many towns around his area and they all have some great story of their background, a legend that makes where they live the best place on earth, and no one seems to mind that the next town over also claims that they鈥檙e the best ever. Not in this melting pot of an area. Everything that everyone does seems to have to be attributed to some part of their background or heritage- such as: there鈥檚 a moment where Ali goes wild with fury after a friend of his kidnaps his fianc茅e (after seducing her with the idea of living in Europe and escaping the Asia that scares her) and he kills the man while taking a bite out of his throat, and afterwards says, 鈥淚 am an Asiatic, not a European. I never mastered the art of hitting below the belt. I can only go mad like the desert wolf.鈥� In this charged atmosphere, every action is a statement, every minute one chooses sides in this meeting place of 鈥淎sia and Europe鈥�. Everyone judges those actions to determine which side you are on. Ali is a man caught by this transformative moment in time- 1914. He is a man who is 鈥淎siatic in his blood鈥� and yet is in love with a woman who loves Europe and by extension does many things that might make him seem to lean towards Europe for the sake of 鈥減utting the smile back in Nino鈥檚 eyes鈥濃€� and yet, and yet. He cannot let go of the desert, and freaks out at the possibility of being posted to Paris where he cannot ride out into the desert, or stand on top of his roof looking over the sand.

There are many quotes here where people try to philosophize their way to a solution to what makes people so different, and how this Asia and Europe is divided. People at the time weren鈥檛 quite sure what to make of it, where the line was. And so conversations like these happened:

鈥淲hat have you against trees? To me they are the embodiment of life fulfilled.鈥�
鈥淎li Khan is afraid of trees the way a child is afraid of ghosts,鈥� said Nino

鈥淚t鈥檚 not as bad as that. But what you feel for trees I feel for the desert,鈥� I replied

Dadiani鈥檚 childish eyes blinked. 鈥淭he desert,鈥� he said, 鈥渇allow bushes and hot sand.鈥�

鈥淭he world of trees perplexes me, your Highness. It is full of fight and mystery, of ghosts and demons. You cannot look ahead. You are surrounded. It is dark. The sun鈥檚 rays are lost in the twilight of the trees. In this twilight everything is unreal. No, I do not love he trees. The shadows of the wood oppress me, and it makes me sad to hear the rustling of the branches. I love simple things: wind, sand and stones. The desert is simple like the thrust of a sword. I lose my way in the woods, your Highness.鈥�

Dadiani looked at me thoughtfully: 鈥淵ou have the soul of a desert man,鈥� he said. 鈥淢aybe that is the one real division between men: wood men and desert men. The Orient鈥檚 dry intoxication comes from the desert, where hot wind and hot sand make men drunk, where the world is simple and without problems. The woods are full of questions. Only the desert does not ask, does not give, and does not promise anything. But the fire of the soul comes from the wood. The desert man- I can see him- has but one face, and knows but one truth and that truth fulfills him. The wood man has many faces. Maybe that is the main difference between East and West.鈥�

The example there would seem to have quite the Western interpretation, but there鈥檚 just as many conversations the other way. And I wonder if I only see the representative of the 鈥淓ast鈥� coming off worse there because of my own Western or modern biases about tolerance. I don鈥檛 know. But if this all seems too much just remember this was written in 1937, by a man who was born in Baku in 1904, and who therefore must be presumed to know what he is talking about. He gives all sides a voice, lets everyone express both their superiority and their shortcomings in more or less equal measure- no one group is allowed to be pure. For instance, our hero repeatedly thinks about killing Westerners for looking at his wife鈥檚 shoulders or and is shocked by them asking about her in conversation- interest in another man鈥檚 wife being indecent in his society. While at the same time he is the man who gives up the most of himself for love, tries his best to do whatever makes Nino happy even at the cost of his own identity, and is generally the most honest, kind, and reflective character in the book. Characters representing the West are often shown to have the most drive, the most passion, and the clarity to see the way the world works, and yet they鈥檙e also shown to be hypocritical, and of course.. the horror of WWI. Sadly, the author only has to conjure up the image of the machine gun or say the word 鈥渢renches,鈥� to condemn what all the 鈥渃ivilization鈥� of Europe has come to. The fact that he wrote this on the eve of yet another world war is even more poignant. I鈥檝e heard that this is considered the Azeri national novel- I鈥檇 believe that. It gives a visceral picture of the history, culture and every day life of the area at the time, and more than that deals with the larger conflicts that still plague the region today. And not only the region- elsewhere in the world as well.

The story of the author ties in to the theme of this work. As fascinating as the novel, really. He was born a Ukranian Jew, converted to Islam and became Essad Bey, and published under the name of Kurban Said. He lived in Baku (left for Berlin after the Russian Revolution), Berlin (until Hitler), Austria and Italy. There is evidence, actually, that the Austrian baroness he became friends with in the 1930s deserves co-authorship of this book- it is certainly based on his interactions with her, as is the other novel published under his name, The Girl From the Golden Horn. This was a man who was used to trying on different identities and seeing what became him, what came closest to his Self, and a man who would know what it was like for someone to tell you what you were when you didn鈥檛 consider yourself to be anything of that kind.

Reading this, I often had to remind myself that it was written in 1937. All of these things are still immediately important now- East v. West, the answer to the question 鈥榃hat is Europe?鈥�, the balance between preservation of culture and the natural progress of society, societal structures in a mixed religious society, the problem of what identity one really wants to fix one鈥檚 Self to. The questions of the twentieth century aren鈥檛 over yet, not by a long shot, and it is truly amazing how far we have not come from the days of this novel.