A pioneering work of Ottoman Turkish literature, Prisoner of the Infidels brings the seventeenth-century memoir of Osman Agha of Timişoara—slave, adventurer, and diplomat—into English for the first time. The sweeping story of Osman’s life begins upon his capture and subsequent enslavement during the Ottoman–Habsburg Wars. Adrift in a landscape far from his home and traded from one master to another, Osman tells a tale of indignation and betrayal but also of wonder and resilience, punctuated with queer trysts, back-alley knife fights, and elaborate ruses to regain his freedom.   Throughout his adventures, Osman is forced to come to terms with his personhood and sense of belonging: What does it mean to be alone in a foreign realm and treated as subhuman chattel, yet surrounded by those who see him as an object of exotic desire or even genuine affection? Through his eyes, we are treated to an intimate view of seventeenth-century Europe from the singular perspective of an insider/outsider, who by the end his account can no longer reckon the boundary between Islam and Christendom, between the land of his capture and the land of his birth, or even between slavery and redemption.

    David Cressy presents the reader with a picture of an English people who were at odds with the Puritan killjoys of their day.

    

    

    With its superb display of paintings by Vel zquez and other contemporary artists, the palace became a showcase for the art and culture of Spain's Golden Age. A Palace for a King, first published in 1980, provides a pioneering total history of the construction, decoration, and uses of a major royal palace, emphasising the relationship of art and politics at a critical moment in European history. produced on different aspects of the history of the palace and its decoration since the 1970s. A number of new, unpublished illustrations have been added, and many of the plates are now reproduced in colour. The publication of this edition gains added importance from the fact that plans for the expansion of the Prado Museum include the restoration of the Hall of Realms to approximate its original appearance, as reconstructed in this volume.