Description
Book SynopsisBased 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.
Trade Review“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
