Bøger af Tom Reiss

By walking the same ground as Dumas - from Haiti tothe Pyramids, Paris to the prison cell at Taranto - Reiss, like the novelistbefore him, triumphantly resurrects this forgotten hero. 'Entrances from first to last.

The Orientalist unravels the mysterious life of a man born on the border between West and East, a Jewish man with a passion for the Arab world. Tom Reiss first came across the man who called himself 'Kurban Said' when he went to the ex-USSR to research the oil business on the Caspian Sea, and discovered a novel instead.

Den utrolige, sande historie om den virkelige greve af Monte Cristo. Et betagende stykke historisk detektivarbejde, der bringer den mand til live, der har inspireret heltefigurerne i de litterære klassikere Greven af Monte Cristo og De tre musketerer.Hovedpersonen i DEN SORTE GREVE, general Alex Dumas, er en mand, der er næsten ukendt i dag. Hans historie er derimod verdenskendt, for hans søn, den store 1800-talsforfatter Alexandre Dumas, brugte sin fars liv og skæbne som forlæg til nogle af litteraturhistoriens mest elskede helte.Bag de utrolige litterære eventyr, Alexandre Dumas skabte, var den næsten endnu mere utrolige hemmelighed, at den virkelige helt var søn af en sort slave født på den franske koloni Saint-Domingue, og som endte med at nå højere op ad den hvide verdens sociale rangstige, end nogen sort mand før og lange tider efter ham.DEN SORTE GREVE er både en medrivende spændingshistorie, et levende historisk indblik i Frankrig i tiden under og efter Den Franske Revolution og Napoleon Bonapartes vej til magten. En fantastisk skæbneberetning om den usædvanlige mand, der var far til en af århundredets største franske forfattere, og en smuk og bevægende historie om kærligheden mellem far og søn.Tom Reiss (f. 1964) er amerikansk forfatter og journalist bosiddende i New York. Reiss har vundet den prestigefulde Pulitzerpris for DEN SORTE GREVE og er nomineret til National Book Critics Circle Award. "Bedre fortælling om revolutionstiden kan man ikke læse." ★★★★★★ - Bent Blüdnikow, Berlingske"Fascinerende og fremragende biografi om personen, der var forbilledet for Dumas' grevelige hævner, hans egen far, mulatten Alexandre Dumas (...) Et velskrevet panorama og portræt af den dramatiske og historiske overgang fra 1700-tallets rationalisme til 1800-tallets romantik" ♥♥♥♥♥ - Bo Tao Michaëlis, Politiken "Tom Reiss bygger sin historie på grundig research af dokumenterne fra den tid. De bekræfter alle, hvor storslået et menneske Alex Dumas, som han kaldte sig efter sin sorte mor, var. Og bogen er der også kun pænt at sige om." - Bo Bjørnvig, Weekendavisen"... det er længe siden, at man har oplevet Den franske Revolution så levende, som det sker her. Mon ikke en hel del vakse drenge kunne lokkes væk fra computeren og læse denne spændende bog - måske sammen med far? Ros til forlaget for at have genoplivet en ægte musketer." ★★★★★ - Gerhardt Eriksen, Jyllands-Posten"En bog, der er en fornøjelse at få fingre i for enhver mand med drengesindet i behold." ★★★★★- Arne Mariager, Jyske Medier"Den sorte greve er en interessant bog - og spændende som en skønlitterær fortælling. Man skulle næsten tro, det var den sorte greves søn, forfatteren Alexandre Dumas, der havde ført pennen. "- Helsingør Dagblad

Astonishing. Searingly honest with plenty of drama it is the true story of a young life led that promised much, delivered more that could ever have been envisaged until the bottom fell out of the author's world.From the realms of high finance and a chance encounter with the President to the comedic pathos of the participation in a football tournament, as an inpatient of a psychiatric facility. After a lengthy period flat out on the canvas of life, our pugilist in all but name, gets back into the ring and makes another attempt, successful again, to prove you can't keep a good man down.If only that were the end of the story. But there's a sting in the tail that brings readers up short. The lesson: it really is a good idea to make the most of every day granted to you. Tom Reiss professes to know less and less about life as he poignantly, and with good humour, reflects upon his own.Reiss's mastery of storytelling through his melodic prose gently guides the reader through the most compelling of lives.Quintessentially, this is a beautiful memoir by a truly remarkable man. Read it. You'll be surprised by what you may learn.

WINNER OF THE 2013 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYGeneral Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar-because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.But, hidden behind General Dumas's swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave-who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution-until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world's first multi-racial society. TIME magazine called The Black Count "one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible." But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany. Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Ninoa story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaustis still in print today.But Levs life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identityuntil she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereckalso a friend of both Freuds and Einsteinswas arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolinis official biographeruntil the Fascists discovered his true identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last bookdiscovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyonehelped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Levs story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subjects life. Reisss quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaums deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worldsof European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientaliststhat have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth centuryof the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.