to power. Chamanzaminli would have had to have left the manuscript of Ali and Nino in Europe at this time, 1925–1926, as it was critical of the Bolshevik regime. It would have been suicidal to return to Baku with the manuscript in hand, as the Bolsheviks had executed most of the government officials of the former regime and any opposition. As it was, a decade later, the Azerbaijan Writers Union in 1937 were under orders from Stalin to purge anyone from their ranks who did not embrace the Soviet ideology. Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli was accused of introducing "counter-revolutionary" ideas through the anti-heroes of his novels, and soon afterwards, he was arrested and sentenced to the GULag, where he died in 1943. Chamanzaminli used the pseudonym "Ali Khan Chamanzaminli" in some of his earliest works, published in 1911. Ali Khan is also the name of the main character in the novel Ali and Nino. Lev Nussimbaum and the pseudonym "Kurban Said" Lev Nussimbaum, who wrote in German under the pen name of Essad Bey, is also linked to the pseudonym "Kurban Said," and by some observers to the novel Ali and Nino. When Lev Nussimbaum, still in his early 30s, began confronting the possibility of his own death from Buerger's Disease, he set out to write his autobiography, titling it The Man who Knew Nothing about Love (Der Mann, der von der Liebe nichts verstand). He signed it "Kurban Said." Although never published, Der Mann was advertised in 1937 as if it had been published and was available for purchase. This was the same year in which Ali and Nino appeared. Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist, concludes that since 'The Man Who Knew Nothing about Love" was the work of Lev Nussimbaum, then he was also the author of Ali and Nino. However, even Reiss warns his readers that Nussimbaum's own statements about his own identity were the least credible. "Years of collecting every shred of evidence I could of his existence revealed that … Lev's simplest statements about himself—name, race, nationality—are the ones that can least be trusted." It is possible that Nussimbaum was, in signing "Der Mann" as Kurban Said, appropriating a nom de plume already in use. Close examination suggests that one should be cautious about equating Lev Nussimbaum with other works published by "Kurban Said." Research indicates that Essad Bey did have his fingers in the