Ali and Nino

From the author of The Girl from the Golden Horn, a novel of the enduring love between childhood friends divided by war & their separate cultures.

First published in Vienna in 1937, this classic story of romance and adventure has been compared to Dr. Zhivago and Romeo and Juliet. Ali and Nino is Kurban Said’s masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.

It is the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea, poised precariously between east and west. Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim schoolboy from a proud, aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European sensibilities. To be together they must overcome blood feud and scandal, attempt a daring horseback rescue, and travel from the bustling street of oil-boom Baku, through starkly beautiful deserts and remote mountain villages, to the opulent palace of Ali’s uncle in neighboring Persia. Ultimately the lovers are drawn back to Baku, but when war threatens their future, Ali is forced to choose between his loyalty to the beliefs of his Asian ancestors and his profound devotion to Nino. 

Combining the exotic fascination of a tale told by Scheherazade with the range and magnificence of an epic, Ali and Nino is a timeless classic of love in the face of war.

Praise for Ali and Nino

“Said’s romantic tale of young love and political upheaval in Central Asia calls for violins and handkerchiefs. . . . A saga of war and love and the difficult marriage of Europe and Asia in the Caucasus, this is at heart a rousing, old-fashioned, tear-jerking love story.” —Publishers Weekly

“Poignant and beautiful . . . alive with a vividly unique vision of colliding cultures and enduring love.” —Newsweek

“One feels as if one had dug up buried treasure. . . . An epic of cultural change that seems more immediate than this morning's headlines.” —The New York Times