Ali and Nino: A Love Story: Movie Tie-In

This book is not only a love story about two young people from different religions, it is also a dialogue about the differences in attitude and philosophy between the East and the West, between Christianity and Islam. It is beautifully written and devoid of sentimental mush. Together with the beautiful film by the same name, I have been inspired to visit Baku, Azerbaijan, a place I never thought I'd visit.

The book is stupid. The author says this is a love story, but why these two young people love each other is totally unfathomable as is most of what happens in the book. When a girl raised in the city goes to a rural village where she has to carry water from a well and she accepts it without a second thought...that fanatasy not fiction. Also, ieither Ali is supposed to represent any meaningful number of Muslims and it either explains why the Muslim countries in the Middle East are so backward or he's simply a stereotype embody in every prejudice of Muslims.

This is not just a simple love story. But it is a romance, and a journey through the Caucasus, and a love story of operatic proportions. Ali & Nino by Kurban Said is all of these things presented as a somewhat traditional novel by a very nontraditional author. It is a romance in the tradition of great romantic literature. Ali Kahn, the narrator and hero, becomes a hero conquering his enemies in love and in war. As a national hero he is portrayed as growing into the position of national icon, the sort of mythic hero about whom wonderful stories are told. We are fortunate to read his own story. The novel shows us the Caucasus of the early twentieth century as it undergoes tremendous political change and must react to world events of war and revolution that impinge on the life of the local culture. It is a culture for which blood feuds are as important as international news. We see new nations in the process of formation: Georgia, Azerbaijan and modern Iran. At the center of the novel is the love story of Ali Kahn Shirvanshir and Nino Kipiani, one Muslim and one Christian, whose love transcends religion and culture and national borders. The author develops these characters with depth so you know them and share in their feelings. They live in the real world of the Orient but share in Western culture as naturally as they adapt to the change from the rustic village in the Caucasus to the luxurious palace in Muslim Azerbaijan. One reads of Western Opera, Faust & Eugene Onegin, being as much a part of their culture as the great Islamic poets. This made the book more engaging than any simple love story. Kurban Said, who was himself something of a mystery, created a lasting work to read again and again in Ali & Nino.

Interesting love story be tweet a modem boy from Azerbaijan and a Christian Georgian princess and of all the problems to come together and keep together in spite of huge differences in their uprising and in their vision of life. The whole story is kind of a representation of the clash between two cultures and on the impossibility of the Caucasus to find a way to live at peace together. Some views expressed by different characters are really enlightening. The book is pleasant to read.

I was moved to read this book after reading The Orientalist - about the author. Ali and Nino fascinated me, in large part because of the history & culture that were its context. It gave some unusual insights into the thinking of a Shiite Muslim of the early 20th century. And of course a love story that crossed religious & cultural boundaries. Loved it!

"Ali and Nino: A Love Story" is a poignant tale of love and adventure which Queen Shahrazad would have been proud to add to her anthology. This compelling story is set in Baku, Azerbaijan, the oil rich city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Depending on one's religion and ethnicity, Baku used to be considered either the easternmost city in Europe, or the doorway to the Orient. Many ancient, aristocratic and fabulously wealthy families, Georgian and Armenian Christians, and Persian Muslims lived here for generations. The Russian Empire, which encompassed both Georgia and Azerbaijan, maintained a tenuous peace, and, in fact, the citizens of Baku formed deep intercultural friendships which went back a hundred years, or more. However, beneath the surface, the conflict between Islam and Christianity seethed in the never-ending struggle for cultural and religious domination. The novel covers the turbulent times from 1909 to 1920, and opens on the eve of World War I, continues through the Bolshevik Revolution, and provides deep insight into the conflicts between Eastern and Western cultures.Ali Khan Shirvanshir, the son and heir of an ancient and noble Persian family is our protagonist and narrator. He was born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the Trans-Caucasus, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, modernity and tradition. Ali Khan is finishing his last year of high school as the novel begins. His forty classmates at the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School of Baku are a mixed lot, numbering thirty Mohammedans, four Armenians, two Poles, three Sectarians, and one Russian. Their Russian Professor condescendingly informs his pupils during a geography lesson that it is their responsibility to decide "whether our town should belong to progressive Europe or to reactionary Asia." He is not pleased when Ali Khan states his preference for Asia.Ali is fascinated by the secrets, mysteries, hidden nooks and alleys of Baku, his home - "the soft night murmurs, the moon over flat roofs and hot quiet afternoons in the mosque's courtyards," the scent of sea air and the smell of oil. He thanks God that he was born a Muslim of the Shiite faith. He only wishes to live his life and die in the same street, in the same house where he was born - along with Nino Kipiani, with the flashing eyes, who eats with a knife and fork, goes about without a veil, and wears sheer silk stockings. Although young, the two love deeply, their feelings continue to grow and endure in spite of the seemingly insurmountable cultural and religious conflicts that confront them. They are both children of the Caucasus, and their friendship was born on the Caspian shores of Baku.When Ali recounts to Nino the discussion that took place in class and how he had heatedly argued for Baku to remain Asian, Nino says bluntly: "Ali Khan, you are stupid. Thank God we are in Europe. If we were in Asia they would have made me wear the veil ages ago and you could not see me."Ali has the soul of a desert man. A friend once told him, "The Orient's dry intoxication, comes from the desert, where hot wind and hot sand make men drunk, where the world is simple and without problems. The desert man has but one face and knows but one truth, and that truth fulfills him. The fanatic comes from the desert." This might have been true of Ali if it were not for his great love for Nino, his real life Georgian Christian princess. Their feelings for each other makes them both much more complex characters than they would be otherwise, encompassing a greater wisdom and compassion together than they would have ever been able to alone.A pious friend tells Ali, "The woman is just an acre on which the man sows." He reminds Ali that women have "no souls nor intelligence. No Paradise or Hell is waiting for a woman. When she dies she just disintegrates into nothing." Ali does not believe this, but begins to feel confused and alienated. Then his father advises him to never forget, when he marries, his wife will live in his shadow. Meanwhile, after the couple's engagement is announced, Nino's father talks with Ali about the necessity for mutual trust and respect in marriage. "Man and wife," he says, "should help each other by word and deed. And they must never forget that they have equal rights and that their souls are their own."The couple's relationship is at the center of the novel's events, but "Ali and Nino" is much more than a romance. The story takes the reader on a fascinating magic carpet ride to cosmopolitan Baku; irresistibly beautiful Tbilisi, capital of Georgia; the Karabakh, of western Azerbaijan, where the world's most glorious and hardy horses are bred; Teheran, the ancient, mystical capital city of Persia, and the mountains of Dagestan. We witness the consequences of love and passion; war, political and cultural turmoil, and revolution; honor and disgrace, and the impact of Islam, Christianity, and newly born Bahaism on the times.While reading "Ali and Nino : A Love Story," I was reminded of an old saying my grandmother used to repeat, "A bird may love a fish, but where will they build a home." Ali and Nino loved each other deeply, were bound by a strong friendship and mutual respect, but in the period in which they lived it was almost impossible for them to find a living environment in which both of them could breathe and be who they were as individuals, as well as a couple.This is a beautifully written novel, both lyrical and powerful in its use of language. What is most strange, is that the author's, or authors,' story is almost as dramatic as that of Ali and Nino. The novel was first published in German, in Germany, in 1937. Paul Theroux, who wrote the Afterword to the Anchor Edition, (the one I have and recommend), calls the novel, "....one of literature's foundlings." Apparently, lost and/or forgotten in the chaos of WWII and the aftermath, "Ali and Nino" was rediscovered in a secondhand bookstore in the ruins of postwar Berlin by Jenia Graman. She read the novel, and struck by the originality and beauty of the story, translated it and saw to its publication - first in England and then in the United States.It is thought that the author, Kurban Said, is actually two people. Lev Nussimbaum was a Jew, born in Baku in 1905 whose family moved to Berlin during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Nussimbaum became a journalist and author, and eventually converted to Islam, taking the name Essad Bey. When Hitler became Chancellor of the German Nation in 1933, Nussimbaum moved to Austria where he began an intense friendship with Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, also a writer. It is thought that "Ali and Nino" is a collaborated effort between the two. Whoever wrote this extraordinary novel, it is well worth your attention!JANA

This book is set in Baku, Azerbaijan, shortly before and during the First World War. Ali is a Moslem with a distiguished family history and proud of his culture. Nino is an upper class Georgian Christian who strongly identifies with Europe. They have been childhood sweethearts and plan to marry despite their cultural and religious differences. When war breaks out in Europe, Ali first dismisses it as a fight between unbelievers, but as it gradually encroaches on the region, Ali and Nina's lives get swept up in the war.This is a very vivid, enjoyable, and well-written book in which the many different places are brought to life by the author's eye for detail. According to the helpful introduction written by Paul Theroux, the author's name, Kurbain Said, is a pseudonym, and it's thought that the book was written by a European Jew who converted to Islam while living in the area. The fact that the book was written by an immigrant is reflected in the amount of detail in the descriptions (a native person probably wouldn't have made so much effort to explain everything). Because of the author's desire to capture as many aspects of life in the region as possible, harems, kidnappings of brides, the different ethnic groups, mountain villages, dervishes, etc., the love story itself suffers a bit and the book rather jumps from place to place. Parts of the story describing the relationship between the couple are moving, such as the struggles Nino had in coping with the suffocating life of a harem, but this is primarily an ethnography capturing life in the Caucasus region a hundred years ago with the love story used as a vehicle to allow the author to do this.

Join the select cult and relish this book. I chose it for our book group; and it got a very high rating from almost everyone. One thing I like is that it has no pretensions, in terms of plot or character. It is dead easy to read. The richness of the background (Azerbaijan; Persia; Georgia; and the backdrop of the ever-widening WW1) is, however, matched by the vividness of the characters. Beyond the book, so to speak, is the fascinating back-story. Don`t read too much, I would advise, about that back-story, until you have finished "Ali & Nino"; in fact, don`t read the blurb or the biog inside the front cover first......just go straight into the text; and come back to the story behind the book later. Then you can buy or borrow "The Orientalist" and find a whole, wider world of mystery and intrigue. "Ali and Nino" is terrific !

Set in WW1 era Azerbaijan, this is the extremely interesting story of (narrator) Ali, a Muslim, and his love-marriage with a beautiful Christian girl.From the very first page, the theme of this book - the duality of Azerbaijan in both location and cultural evolution (is it Europe or Asia?) - is brought to the fore. And the differences in outlook between the two protagonists emphasize the total dissimilarity of cultures.Nino is a privileged, educated young woman, yet when staying with her Muslim in-laws is expected to remain hidden away in the harem - well-bred friends wouldn't dream of even asking about Ali's wife, Meanwhile Ali chafes at her decorating the house in western style as he realises increasingly that he is a true Muslim and a son of Baku, ready to become involved in fighting for her independence, as Russia, Turkey and England have armies out there...There were some lovely descriptions of a remot part of the world, and I learned a lot about the lifestyle and the politics, yet I didn't really care about the characters and didn't hugely enjoy it.

Very badly written in translation but…Learned a lot about the history of turkey and Middle East , as well as the customs and beliefs of Islam. The love story itself was between a Muslim and Christian and the difficulties caused by the war. Not a page Turner.

bought for trip to the caucasus. rather derivative and somewhat disappointing