Tom Reiss has argued—first in a 1999 article in "The New Yorker" and then at greater length in his 2005 biography of Nussimbaum, "The Orientalist"—that it is "almost certain that Kurban Said was a cover for him so that he could continue to receive royalties from his work." Reiss cites and quotes documentary evidence not only linking the pseudonym Kurban Said to Nussimbaum and Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof, but also showing reasons that the Jewish Nussimbaum would have needed a new pseudonym after he was expelled from the (Nazi) German Writers Union in 1935, that he received income from books published under that name, and that he himself claimed authorship of "Ali and Nino".