Wendell Steavenson, in her 2002 book "Stories I Stole: From Georgia" reported that "Vazirov the younger called Lev Nussimbaum a fraudster, a 'charlatan', not a Bakuvian, who wrote twelve books 'of an adventurist nature' but had nothing to do with "Ali and Nino". "Ali and Nino", he declared 'is a pure Azerbaijani novel.' His father, he said, had written "Ali and Nino" and managed to get it published in Vienna through a cousin who lived there. There were too many details that matched: Kurban Said must have been an Azeri. 'He even knew all about a special kind of Shusha cheese, which only a man from Shusha would know about.' Vazirov argued."