Peter Constantine - Böcker

Based on a true story set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, The Purchased Bride tells the tale of Maria, a Greek girl who was bought at age fifteen by a much older, wealthy Ottoman man. As the Ottoman Empire falls and insurgents torch their Greek village in the Caucasus, Maria and her parents flee and find shelter in a refugee camp across the border in Ottoman territory. Cholera and plague are impending, and the priest running the camp takes a desperate measure, arranging to marry Maria off to a wealthy Ottoman Turk in the capital. She and her best friend, Lita, then travel toward the Black Sea coast through a fascinating world of ancient and forgotten Ottoman mountain communities. They encounter escalating violence, sniper attacks, and marauding troops amid the Empire’s collapse, as breakaway provinces declare themselves independent caliphates in defiance of the Sultan. And when Lita escapes, Maria is left to face her fate alone. A story of war, struggle, and ultimate success, based on the life of Constantine’s grandmother, The Purchased Bride sheds light on a turbulent and dangerous part of history.

This volume explores the importance of scholarly and literary communities, the challenges of translation and difference, and the search for the ineffable in art. It is a collection of interviews, translations, scholarly essays, and tributes in honor of Burton Pike (1930–2022), a renowned translator of Robert Musil, Rilke, Goethe, Gerhard Meier, and others, as well as a scholar of literary Modernism and the image of the city. He was also an extraordinary teacher, mentor, and inspiration to a generation. The pieces are mostly written by former students, colleagues, and admiring friends, but the book also includes two interviews with Pike, along with Pike’s own previously unpublished lecture on Thomas Mann’s last novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man.