âThe problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.â
â Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
After a brief summer hiatus, we're back and better than ever.
https://tikhanovlibrary.com/
As well as a new homepage, we've changed the format on all our books to proper pocketbook sizes. Not only is this easier to carry around/looks better, it also reduces costs which lets us pass the savings onto you!
To celebrate, for this month only we'll be selling Harukichi Shimoi's The Italian War for only $5 USD, a full 50% discount. The Italian War was the first book I translated, and seeing the reception is what really inspired me to try to make it in publishing.
For some of you this is old news, but many of you have probably never heard of this book, and I never had it posted on my website. Harukichi Shimoi was a Japanese adventurer/poet who lived in Italy during the Great War and involved himself very deeply in the struggles of the Italian nation at that time. The Italian War is a collection of correspondences between Shimoi and his friends written towards the end of the war, while Harukichi Shimoi was traveling alongside the Arditi as a war-correspondent.
Recently Shimoi has seen a resurgence in popularity thanks to being featured as a final boss in the popular video game Hearts of Iron IV.
It's a very short, very interesting, little book, and you can order a copy here:
https://tikhanovlibrary.com/product/the-italian-war/
Baron Ungern-Sternberg was a violent warlord who fought for Mongolian Independence under the Bogd Khanate in the 1920s. He quickly made a name for himself for both his fearlessness and ruthless cruelty. Believing himself to be the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, the Baron wanted to unify Buddhist Asia under a single banner, and then march on the West in a messianic war against the modern world.
An article titled "The vanishing fascination of truly anonymous authors" which appeared on The Guardian in 2011 makes the claim that "Alioshin disappeared after the first world war, and since his publisher's records were destroyed by a bomb, it is unknown what became of him, or whether in fact that was his real name." In the English speaking world, Dmitri Alioshin stands in almost total obscurity, without a single scrap of secondary literature. Much more famous is the mad warlord he served under, Baron Ungern-Sternberg. Despite that, without Dmitri Alioshin, there would be no Baron Ungern-Sternberg. Asian Odyssey remains the only dependable source on the Baron's activities in Mongolia, and describes in detail the events of his life during the war as well as his eventual death.
Asian Odyssey is out now in paperback, and available for free in epub format:
https://tikhanovlibrary.com/asian-odyssey.html
"Alexandr Andreyevich Baranov" and "Sitka Island Chief Katlian With His Wife"
Two of the most historically significant portraits Mikhail Tikhanov produced are the twin paintings of Alexandr Baranov, head of the Russian North American Company, and Chief Katlain, his greatest rival. Both men fought an extended and bloody war against each other, and had even engaged in hand-to-hand melee during a Russian assault on Sitka Sound led personally by Baranov. The campaign had ended a stalemate, with neither side being able to gain significant ground and the Russians taking heavy casualties.
The portrait "Alexandr Andreyevich Baranov" is a notable break from Tikhanov's usual style, and more in line with the conventions of European portraiture at the time. Rather than the colourful Pacific landscape which features in the rest of Tikhanov's work, Baranov's background is obscured in shadow. The composition of the painting is made for a rounded frame, and the usually jagged hands and features of Tikhanov's other paintings have been rounded and softened to affect a greater photo-realism. Around his neck Baranov wears the medallion of knighthood, and on his face the crooked and wyly smile of a man who, through hard work and cunning, had risen from humble beginnings to the highest ranks of Russian society.
In the painting "Sitka Island Chief Katlian With His Wife" we can see that Chief Katlain, in a bold statement of defiance, also wears a medallion. In this case, rather that signalling his submission to the Russian Empire, it represents the absolute sovereignty of him and his people. His wife sits in the background, drawn in both portrait and profile, as is typical of Tikhanov's paintings. In the background we see the Russian fortress of Castle Hill rising from the ocean. This Russian fort marks the first European settlement of what will eventually grow to become the city of Sitka, Alaska.
By the time Tikhanov arrived aboard the Kamchatka both groups had settled into an uneasy peace, both Russians and Tlingit alike preferring the advantages brought by sustained trade over the initial disagreements which had led to the conflict.
Tikhanov Library is an independent publishing company founded in Lund, British Columbia. To read about Mikhail Tikhanov and see his artwork, visit our website at www.tikhanovlibrary.com | Our book catalogue includes books by Alexis de Tocqueville, Dmitri Alioshin, and F.T. Marinetti, among other authors. We are constantly updating with new books and deals.
Born in Baku in on October 17, 1905 to a prominent Jewish family of oil barons, Nussimbaum was forced to flee Azerbaijan at the age of 14 to escape the Russian invasion of his country. Fleeing, often on foot, through the polyethnic Caucuses with his father and whatever the two of them could carry, Nussimbaum would eventually find his way to Europe where he settled in Berlin and had a distinguished career as an orientalist in Weimar Germany.
" I was six years old when my oil-baptism, which others did not dare to undergo until they were twenty, took place. The baptism with oil, which was, so to speak, the introduction into the ruling class, was carried out for every new owner and his grown children. It consisted of sprinkling, by means of a tube equipped with a sprayer, great quantities of oil on the new magnate before the assembled workers and officials. This lasted a few minutes, and was called the âGolden Rain.â Sometimes during the extraction of oil, a fine oil-mist came from the derricks. Everyone was glad if the mist fell on his clothes, for the Golden Rain was considered lucky, and the spots which it caused were never wiped away. " -Blood and Oil in the Orient, p.17
Aside from a prodigious literary output, he found the time to become deeply involved in the politics of his time. He converted to Islam, either in Turkey or Berlin, and helped to found an Islamic student group called Islamia, which quickly disowned him with accusations of not being a "real Muslim." A profile by the New York Herold wrote that he "carries no prayer rug; he fails to salute Mecca when he prays... eats pigs and drinks wine; yet when he came to be married in Berlin he refused to abjure his creed." Despite this he never renounced his Islamic faith, and published a number of books and essays about Islam and the Prophet Mohamed. He had several high profile affairs with wealthy German and American women. Briefly moved to the United States. Was involved in the German-Russian League Against Bolshevism, the Social Monarchist Party, and the Young Russian Movement. His anti Bolshevik credentials were so strong that the Nazi propaganda minister even included several of his books in their list of "excellent books for German minds", which is no small achievement for a Jewish refugee-turned Muslim revert. Sadly his Jewish background did eventually make him a target of suspicion by the Nazis, and he was forced to flee to Italy.
Blood and Oil tells the story of his childhood in Baku and of he and his fatherâs flight through Asia to escape the Soviet encroachment, travelling West through Persia and the Ottoman Empire before finally settling in Germany. Along the way he meets a broad cast of characters, and describes the tapistry of ethnic groups which make up the Caucuses. From the Jassaians, a people who do not work as a matter of tradition; to the Khevsureti, a long lost army of German crusaders who intermarried with local Caucasian women, to the wild mountain Jews who are so ancient that any trace of where they came from has long been lost to time. Lev Nassibaum saw the last dying gasps of the old world order, and died young and impoverished in Italy shortly before the end of the World War II. With no close friends or relatives, he left nothing but the written memories of a homeland that no longer existed.
In this painting we see a girl cradling a small dog. Her features are striking, and there is a sharp use of shadows, but she has a very soft face. Its round and her cheeks and lips have a pleasant redness to them. Her eyes are unnaturally large, but it adds to the expressiveness of the portrait. Her hair is cut short on top, and left to grow long around the sides. There is lei of yellow plumeria. Around her head is a long red veil that she has wrapped around her naked body. Smiling, she is enveloped in a warm and shimmering rose coloured light.
The portrait invokes similarities with many Virgin Mary with Child portraits. The poise of the head, the tender smile and look, the young puppy sleeping tenderly in her arms, all recall the numerous tributes to maternal love that adorn the walls of any Catholic Church.. However the similarities only go so far. There is something deeply erotic about this painting. The strong contrast of shadows that plays out across her naked flesh invoke lamplight and darkness, not the sunny background of Hawaiian beaches. Her veil, which appears to be made of finely woven kapa, and glimmers in the sunlight, also appears to have been painted on as an afterthought. Thrown hastily over her naked body in a style that does not resemble any traditional Hawaiian fashion or appear anywhere else in Mikhail Tikhanovâs work
Indeed if you look closely you can see that the painting has undergone several changes in design during its creation. Her front arm goes to nowhere, and the dog appears to have been painted over the original work, probably masking Tikhanovâs constant inability to draw properly proportioned hands. Unlike his other Hawaiian works, this one does not seem to carry any political significance. The religious symbolism, however, is unmistakable.
https://tikhanovlibrary.substack.com/p/mikhail-tikhanov-in-hawaii
https://medium.com/@tikhanovlibrary/mikhail-tikhanov-in-hawaii-ca534846a78e
Best known in the English speaking world for his book Le Feu Follet, which was adopted into an acclaimed French nouvelle-vague film, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle considered the semi-autobiographical Gilles to be his greatest work. The acclaimed literary critic GaĂ«tan Picon wrote that Gilles âis, without any doubt, one of the greatest novels of the centuryâand one of those books in which the disarming sincerity of a man rises to the grandeur usually reserved to literary transpositions.â
Despite his immense standing in the French inter-war literary scene, and his close relations with many of the most prominent writers and intellectuals of his time, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle has, because of his politics, been largely ignored by the Anglo literary establishment. His masterpiece, Gilles, has gone untranslated for the last seventy years⊠until now. Tikhanov Library has released the first three chapters of Gilles on substack, and is releasing the novel in serialized. We are adding new chapters every week, for free, to the public. You can read the first chapter here:
Chapter I
Tikhanov Library is an independent publishing company founded in Lund, British Columbia. To read Gilles and many other books, both reprints and new releases, visit our website at www.tikhanovlibrary.com | Our catalogue includes books by Alexis de Tocqueville, Dimitri Alioshin, and F.T. Marinetti, among other authors. We are constantly updating our catalog with new books and deals.
Boki, Chief of Oahu, and Hekili, Minister of the Navy, 1818
In the painting Boki, Chief of Oahu, and Hekili, Minister of the Navy. we get a close look at a male figures face. His hand is tucked under his robe in a similar manner to Kamehameha. From the title of the painting we can gather that this man is Boki, Chief of Oahu. In front of him, we see the side profile of another man, sporting a mustache, Hekili. Behind them, almost invisible, is a third character, a single hand carrying a spear.
Boki was a high chief and close right-hand man to Kamehameha, serving as Royal Governor of the island of Oahu and Minister of the Navy under Kamehameha I.
Boki and Liliha on the Kamchatka, 1818
In this painting four figures are present. Center a man with a bright coloured cape and somewhat somber expression stands holding a bottle and cup. Behind him, a woman sits atop a canon, she wears a yellow skirt and appears to be watching Tikhanov with suspicion. Around her neck is a dramatic looking necklace. Both man and woman appear to be drawn both in profile, and viewed from the back. This style is typical in Tikhanovâs work, and many of his portraits feature multiple angles of the subject. Closer examination reveals that the man and the woman with their backs faced to the scene, although wearing identical clothes, are not the same man and woman as those drawn in profile. The man has short hair, and carries a spear. The woman is not wearing a necklace and crown. Behind her, a fifth man, barely visible, peaks out. He carries some kind of fan or standard. There is a striking similarity between the fanbearer of this portrait and the spear bearer of the other. Between the fan and the spear, the dual opulence and violence that underlie Hawaiian aristocratic society is constantly present, lingering in the background almost out of frame.
Boki and Liliha, a portrait by John Hayter 1818
These figures are, of course, Boki and his wife Liliha. Both Boki and his wife Kuini Liliha were leading members of a delegation to England led by King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu in 1824. After the monarchs died from measles during the stay, Boki and his wife returned to Hawaii with Admiral Lord Byron aboard the British frigate, HMS Blonde, which bore the bodies of the late king and queen. They served as interm representatives of the Kingdom, and after returning from the voyage, opened a hotel and bar called the Blonde Hotel, the first of itâs kind on the Island Kingdom.
During their tour of England, they posed together for a second portrait by John Hayter. This allows for a rare opprotunity to compare their likeness to the portrait captured by Mikhail TIkhanov. As we can see, not only are there striking facial similarities, but Liliha is even wearing the same necklace in both paintings.
Great events have just taken place in Algeria; we can believe that others are still in preparation. So the time is ripe, Monsieur, to do as you wish and tell you what I know about Algiers. I do so all the more willingly because, although there has been much discussion about this country, very little is understood about it...
Read Alexis de Tocqueville's previously unpublished Letter on Algeria, describing the ethnography of the country, on our substack:
"Great events have just taken place in Algeria; we can believe that others are still in preparation. So the time is ripe, Monsieur, to do as you wish and tell you what I know about Algiers. I do so all the more willingly because, although there has been much discussion about this country, very little is understood about it..."
-Alexis de Tocqueville, 1st Letter on Algeria
Alexis de Tocqueville is widely considered to be the Father of American Liberalism. A French aristocrat with deep affinities towards the liberalizing movements of his day, Tocqueville is most famous for his book Democracy in America which described the emerging state of American society soon after the War of Independence.
What he is less well known for is his role in the colonization of Algeria, being one of its most influential advocates and forwarding a mixed policy of "partial colonization" and "total domination" which mixed the purchase of land for French settlers with the burning of crops, mass detainment of women and children, and destruction of "everything that resembles a permanent aggregation of population or, in other words, a town.â
Previously unpublished, Tikhanov Library is proud to announce for the first time the translation of Tocqueville's writings on Algeria into English.
Read Alexis de Tocqueville's "First Letter on Algeria" on our substack:
https://tikhanovlibrary.substack.com/p/alexis-de-tocquevilles-first-letter
Or support us and future translations like this by buying the complete collection of his writings in paperback:
https://tinyurl.com/u8fckmah
This book and more are available as paperback and ebook on our website at www.tikhanovlibrary.com
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