Description
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.
About the Author
Peter Constantine is a literary translator and editor, and the director of the Literary Translation Program at the University of Connecticut. His recent translations, published by Random House (Modern Library), include The Essential Writings of Rousseau, The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, and works by Tolstoy, Gogol, and Voltaire. His translation of the complete works of Isaac Babel received the Koret Jewish Literature Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation. A Guggenheim Fellow, he was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov. This is his first novel.
Reviews
"The predominant theme of Peter Constantine's historical novel, The Purchased Bride, is the subjugation of women and girls, but because the prose is delicate and never polemical, it penetrates the heart without hitting us over the head. Readers will feel for Maria and the other girls, for their humanity and spirit, even as they are sold like cattle. A gripping, important book." -Helen Benedict, author of Map of Hope and Sorrow; The Good Deed
"The narrator of The Purchased Bride reimagines through his grandmother's eyes the harrowing journey she undertook as a young girl. Her experiences of war and flight are marked not only by brutality, violence, and desperation, but also by tender humanity and astonishing perseverance. In an extraordinary and moving act of creative restitution, Peter Constantine brings a vanished world to life in richly sensuous detail and immediacy. This is a riveting, powerful story with striking and distressing echoes in our own time." -Ross Benjamin, translator of The Diaries of Franz Kafka
"The Purchased Bride is the work of a master. You will find it hard to believe it is a debut-and then remember that Peter Constantine has spent his life translating the world's greatest authors. To twist a line from the novel: 'Everything he touches turns good, under every hair he finds a jewel.'" -Carmen Boullosa, author of The Book of Eve
"Constantine is an entertaining storyteller with an eye to detail that serves him well as both a translator and a novelist." -Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books
Book Information
ISBN 9781646052271
Author Peter Constantine
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Deep Vellum Publishing
Publisher Deep Vellum Publishing
