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Pharaoh

Bolesaw Prus
€22.99
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19th century
A01=Bolesaw Prus
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ancient
annotations
assassination
Author_Bolesaw Prus
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B06=Christopher Kasparek
Bolesaw Prus
Category1=Fiction
Category=FBC
Category=FC
censorship
century
Christopher Kasparek
classic
classics
comparative literature
COP=United States
Czesaw Miosz
defamation
Delivery_Pre-order
dynamics
dynasty
Egypt
Egyptian
Egyptology
Emancipated Women
empire
epic
eq_bestseller
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
fiction
foreword
Joseph Conrad
Language_English
literary
literary giant
literature
loyalties
Miosz
new translation
nineteenth
novel
PA=Not yet available
Pharaoh
Poland
Polish
Polish writer
Polish writers in translation
Polish-American
politics
Polonia
power
Price_€10 to €20
Prus
PS=Forthcoming
Ramses
saga
seduction
set in Ancient Egypt
society
softlaunch
story
struggle
The Doll
The Outpost
translated by
translation
translator
war
writer

Product details

  • ISBN 9780781814508
  • Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
  • Publication Date: 12 Dec 2024
  • Publisher: Hippocrene Books Inc.,U.S.
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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Description

A groundbreaking new translation of the only historical novel by noted Polish writer Bolesław Prus.

“ . . . unique in world literature of the nineteenth century”--Czesław Miłosz


Imbued with poetry, leavened with humor, and graced with moments of transcendent beauty, Pharaoh offers a compelling picture of life at every level of ancient Egyptian society.  As the story unfolds, Egypt is experiencing internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom. The young Pharaoh Ramses learns that challenging power leaves him vulnerable to seduction, defamation, intimidation and even assassination. The ultimate lesson learned by Ramses is the power of knowledge.

Prus is a distinctive voice in world literature and was Joseph Conrad’s favorite Polish writer. This new edition of Christopher Kasparek’s translation of Pharaoh vividly brings this extraordinary novel to life. It includes a detailed foreword and annotations, based on extensive research and textual refinements, that will enhance the reader’s appreciation not only for ancient Egypt, but also for Prus’ composition process.

Pharaoh has been translated into twenty-three languages and was adapted as a 1966 Polish feature film.  
About Bolesaw Prus
Bolesław Prus (1847-1912), who took the pen surname Prus from the appellation of his family’s coat of arms,  at age 15 joined the 1863 Polish Uprising against Imperial Russia, where he suffered severe battle injuries.  He was spared resettlement on Russian imperial lands and was able to complete secondary school. He studied mathematics and physics at Warsaw University, until his studies there were cut short by penury.  At age 25 in 1872, Prus embarked on a forty-year career as a newspaper columnist, urging Poles to study science and technology and to develop industry and commerce.  After achieving great acclaim with his short stories, between 1886 and 1893 he wrote three novels on the “great questions of our age”: The Outpost, The Doll, and The New Woman. In 1894-95, he completed his only historical novel, Pharaoh. Christopher Kasparek, son of World War II Polish Armed Forces veterans, was born in Scotland. He produced an initial draft translation of Pharaoh while in secondary school.  After pre-medical studies at Monterey Peninsula College, from 1965-66 he studied Polish literature at the University of California, Berkeley with 1980 Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, including participation in Miłosz’s seminars translating Polish poetry. In 1972-78 Kasparek studied medicine at Warsaw Medical School, in Poland.  During that time, he translated papers and two books, A History of Six Ideas and On Perfection, by the doyen of Polish philosophers, Władysław Tatarkiewicz. After receiving his medical degree, Kasparek translated the standard history of Polish breaking of German Enigma-machine ciphers (a cryptological achievement which, a month before the outbreak of World War II, Poland shared with France and Britain, enabling Britain to break Enigma ciphers at Bletchley Park):  Władysław Kozaczuk,  Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, Maryland, University Publications of America, 1984. Kasparek subsequently practiced psychiatry for 33 years in California, where he resides. He has also published translations of sections of several other books; as well as articles and translations on a wide range of subjects in publications including The Monterey Herald; The Daily Californian (the U.C. Berkeley student newspaper); Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa (Logology [or] Science of Science; Warsaw—a quarterly of the Polish Academy of Sciences); Dialectics and Humanism: The Polish Philosophical Quarterly; Cryptologia; The Polish Review; Psychiatric News; The Psychiatric Times; Clinical Psychiatry News; and many articles and translations in the online Wikipedia and Wikisource.  He resides in Carmel, California.

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