ALI and Nino by Kurban Said

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

Azerbaijan fiction

Original title -Ali un Nino

Translator Jenia Gaman

Source – Personal copy

I love it when Simon and Karen announce the year of the club every six months. For me, it is an excuse to go down a rabbit hole and find interesting and exciting books to read for the year. Anyway thuis was the first choice for 1937. It has a great story. First, Kurban said it was a Non de plume. But over time, who it was isn’t known for sure. There is a whole wiki page about this on my edition that points towards Lev Nussimbaum, a writer who escaped Azerbaijan and a friend of someone else, the Austrian countess Elfriede nEherfenfels, also thought to be the writer of this book at some point. Another writer put forward by his son is Yusif Mirbaba oghlu Vazirov, a writer also connected to Baku, where the book is mainly set. The book came out i n1937 uin Austria given its timing would been contirversal. The book saw the light of day for a second time when it was found and translated into English by the translator in the fifties. Since then, it has been translated into thirty languages. It is a classic take on the forbidden love story.

My father went for advice to the Mullah at the mosque, who declared that all this Latin was just vain delusion.

So my father put on all his Turkish, Persian and Russian decorations, went to see the headmaster, donated some chemical equipment or other and I passed. A notice had been put up in the school stating that pupils were strictly forbidden to enter school premises with loaded revolvers, telephones were installed in town, and Nino Kipiani was still the most beautiful girl in the world.

His view on his girlfriend Nino the most Beautiful girl in the world.

The story follows a couple of the titles from when. They are at a Western school in Baku as kids. The struggle this leads to as Ali, although he goes to the school, is from an Azerbaijani family of Persian descent and is Muslim. Where as Nino is from a Georgian family and is Christian. So what follows is their love and wanting to marry. Getting first his family and then her family to agree to the wedding. All this is against the backdrop of the Cosmopolitan Baku of the time. It was full of Oil money, and many different people lived together there then, but the oil meant it was eyed by the Soviets to the north. The book is told from Ali’s perspective and what I loved is how he captured the feel of the city at that time. The twenties near the world is destined for war, but in this desert city, this leads to the people wanting their own freedom to escape the fear of the hammer and sickle to the North and the Soviet forces. Add to this the families want the best for their sons and daughters. Ali’s family is well known, and her family are royal in their way, as some call her a princess. What price is happiness as they have to escape their world of wealth? This is a story of deep love between two people and how it can win out.

When the first excitement was over I sneaked to the tele-phone. I had not spoken to Nino for two weeks. A wise rule demands that a man should keep away from women when he stands at life’s crossroads. Now I lifted the grip of the unwieldy apparatus, turned the bell and shouted into the mouth-piece: ‘3381!’ Nino’s voice replied: ‘Passed, Ali?’

‘Yes, Nino.’

“Congratulations, Ali!’

‘When and where, Nino?’

‘Five o’clock at the lake in the Governor’s Garden, Ali.’ I could not go on talking. Behind my back lurked the curious ears of my relations, servants and eunuchs. Behind Nino’s— her aristocratic mother. Better to stop. Anyway, a bodiless voice is so strange that one cannot really enjoy

I love the way the love affair goes so old fashioned to these days.

This has it all an exotic setting a world on the bring of madness of the war. A pair torn by family, religion and race, he is Asian and Muslim, and she is European and Christian, but at the heart of this all is the love between them. One mind turns to incredible stories of love, Romeo and Juliet, or something like The English Patient, with its exotic setting, a cosmopolitan time in Baku before the Soviets took over the country. Or even Florentino and Fernina come to mind in Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera of how love sees through everything. I also loved the place, the Baku of the time, which reminded me of how someone like Pamuk Captures Istanbul in his fiction. There is an eye for the details of daily life that makes the prose in this book leap off the page. It also reminds me why I always read books for the club year week, and that is the voyage of discovery of books like this that would have passed me by. Have you read this book or any other book from Azerbaijan?

Winston’s score – A – the hidden gem of a book about a love affair, the power of love, set in the wonderfully cosmopolitan Baku before Soviet rule.