HOW A JEW SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST PRESENTING HIM SELF AS A MOOR.

The Orientalist, a biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim while living in Germany during the years leading up to the Holocaust. Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, it tells the story of how Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey” and “Kurban Said,” became a celebrated adventurer and author of the enduring novel Ali and Nino-–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.

But Lev’s life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck – also a friend of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein – was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Benito Mussolini’s official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his true origins. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–scrawled in tiny print in half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound.

THE WORLD IS A VERY INTERESTING PLACE WHEN YOU HAVE CULTURE AND USE IT TO SURVIVE. I RESPECT THE “AFRICAN AMERICAN” MOORISH MOVEMENT FOR THE PURE AUDACITY OF ITS CLAIMS AND ITS DESIRE TO BE FREE THROUGH CULTURAL LEGISLATION.

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