At one time a Benedictine monk, Antoine-Francois Prevost (1697-1763) was a man of dubious morality fascinated by scandal and the struggle between virtue and desire. As a novelist, he wrote about enigmatic historical and fictional characters, exploring their hypocrisy, madness, and disgrace. His Histoire d'une Grecque moderne (1740), based on the actual experiences of a French ambassador to the Ottoman ... Read moreEmpire at the beginning of the 18th century, may not be as well known as his sentimental novel Manon Lescaut (1731), but it is nevertheless a classic literary masterpiece that well deserves this outstanding new translation. . . . [This] is the first accurate, single-volume translation and critical edition of the novel. Singerman provides a fascinating introduction, extensive footnotes, and a highly reliable English rendering of Prevost's powerful narrative, which is clearly far more than just a roman a clef. Summing up: Essential. -C. B. Kerr, Choice This superb new translation by Alan J. Singerman, one of the foremost specialists on Abbe Prevost, constitutes the first scholarly edition in English of Histoire d'une Grecque moderne. This remarkable novel-an early, paradigmatic example of unreliable first-person narration, one of the greatest novels ever written on the theme of jealousy, and an outstanding example of eighteenth-century Orientalism-will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. Singerman's introduction and notes are models of erudite scholarship and critical lucidity. -Guillaume Ansart, Indiana University Show Less