Tom reiss biography
Tom Reiss is an American author, historian, and journalist....
Tom Reiss is an author, historian, and biographer whose work resurrects the lives of brilliant outsiders and rebels in times of global upheaval.
Tom Reiss Biography, Books, and Similar Authors
Interview
Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist, traces the mysterious life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany.
Who was Lev Nussimbaum?
What was he really like?
At his height he was a kind of jazz age/Weimar media star, a professional "Orientalist" who liked to play up his exotic childhood, and was part of the café society that included people like Walter Benjamin and also the brilliant Russian exiles, like the Nabokovs and the Pasternaks.
It was during the whole "Cabaret" period in Berlin, but it was much much wilder and stranger than it was even presented in that film. But what was amazing to me was that while most Jews in the 20's and 30's tried as hard as they could to assimilate, Lev did everything he could to make himself stand out.
In the cafes of Berlin and Vienna he was sporting flowing robes and a turban, and the same