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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Marvelously written, and imbued with scholarly thinking on a forgotten tradition of Jewish-Islamic accord. [15 Dec 2004, p.1190]
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Outstanding
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Chicago Tribune Darin Strauss
A brainy, nimble, remarkable book. [13 Feb 2005, p.C1]
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Yet the real achievement of this book -- and it is a significant one -- is that in solving the prosaic puzzle, Reiss has preserved the romantic allure. At times, Reiss describes Nussimbaum's Orientalism as a deliberate gambit; at times, he allows it to be a purely unconscious chameleonic peculiarity. Reiss has illuminated the details of Nussimbaum's life without diminishing his cryptic glamour. [20 Feb 2005, p.R4]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Jesse Berrett
The problem is not that his history feels potted or lumped in. Rather, it's that there is so much more background than foreground that we occasionally lose track of our protagonist.... But the results are mostly exhilarating.
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Favorable
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The Economist
This would be hard work if the inter-weaving of biography, investigation and geopolitics were not so elegant.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown
Reiss sometimes overdoes the historical background, to the point where Lev occasionally seems a supporting character in his own biography. But when this singular man's several selves are center stage in The Orientalist, the harmonies are strange and plaintive.
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Favorable
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Houston Chronicle Steve Weinberg
The Orientalist records a life so bizarre that it's difficult to believe, despite author Tom Reiss' superb reporting backed by hundreds of endnotes and bibliography entries.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Jim Doyle
Reiss gets bogged down in tangential details while trying to place Nussimbaum in early 20th-century context, but this is still an important work that sheds light on the pre-Zionist phenomenon of Jewish Orientalism that led many Jews to embrace Muslim culture. [1 Jan 2005, p.124]
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Favorable
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The New York Times William Grimes
A wondrous tale, beautifully told.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal Melik Kaylan
Ultimately, perhaps, there is too much background, especially of the Weimar era, which skews the book westward, and not nearly enough of Nussimbaum's own writings, which centered chiefly on matters eastern.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Veronica Horwell
Reiss, through obsessed sleuthing, has retrieved a believable liar and revealed a secret.
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Favorable
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The Observer David Jays
What is remarkable about The Orientalist is the way borders dissolve, and once-monolithic regimes fragment or melt away.
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Favorable
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The Spectator Anthony Sattin
A meticulous and fascinating book.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Noel Malcolm
If this book has a fault, it is that it never breaks entirely free from Lev's imagination.
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Favorable
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TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Walter Laqueur
The Orientalist would have been even better had it been a third shorter.... But the extraordinary story of this man, more tragedy than comedy, had to be told and it has been told well in this book.
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Favorable
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The Independent Robert Irwin
Though Reiss's book is not a closely focused biography and, at some level, his quest is a failure, the journey has been most entertaining and is definitely recommended.
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Favorable
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Booklist Mark Knoblauch
In the hands of a less adept writer, such complex history might grow opaque and tedious, but Reiss' storytelling flair and the utterly compelling character of Lev Nussimbaum turn this biography into a page-turner of epic proportion. [15 Dec 2004, p.700]
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Although Reiss's book is intermittently enthralling, he suffers from the notorious author's inability to let go of anything he has learned.
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Mixed
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The Nation Daniel Lazare
Because the details of Nussimbaum's life are so sketchy, Reiss has chosen to pad The Orientalist with material on the history of Russian radicalism, the rise of the German Freikorps, the 1922 assassination of Walther Rathenau and a good deal else besides. Some of it is well done, but much of it is embarrassingly simplistic.
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Unfavorable
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Washington Post Masha Gessen
The author's insistence on chasing every lead to the end is ultimately the book's downfall: The story of Lev Nussimbaum, also known as Essad Bey, also known as Kurban Said, drowns in the details, the asides that go on for pages and pages, and the footnotes that are sometimes barely shorter than the asides -- and notably longer than the quotes from the hero's own work.
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