Ali and Nino
SynopsisPlot
Ali and Nino, two lovers from vastly different backgrounds, grow up together in carefree innocence in Baku on the Caspian Sea. Here, where Eastern and Occidental collide, they are inevitably drawn into the events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution.
Story
About this book
Ali and Nino is a love story set in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Ali is a Muslim Azerbaijani boy and Nino is a Georgian Christian girl, and the two grow up together in a city where Asian and European ways of life overlap. Their different backgrounds shape how each of them sees the world, and these differences become harder to navigate as they grow older and the pressures of family, religion, and politics close in around them.
The novel opens in the final years before the First World War, when Baku is still part of the Russian Empire. As war breaks out and the Russian Revolution follows, the city and the wider Caucasus region are pulled into years of upheaval. Ali and Nino's personal story unfolds against this period of collapsing empires and emerging nations, and their fates become entangled with the political struggles around them.
The book was first published in 1937 under the pen name Kurban Said. The true identity of the author has been a subject of long-running debate among scholars and researchers, with several candidates proposed over the decades. Baku itself, with its oil wealth and its position between Europe and Central Asia, plays a central role in the story.
