Secrets, Lies, and Consequences
A Great Scholar's Hidden Past and his Protégé's Unsolved Murder
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:1st Mar '24
Should be back in stock very soon
This book investigates the life and mysterious death of Ioan Culianu, exploring the connection between his murder and the documents he left behind in Secrets, Lies, and Consequences.
In May 1991, Ioan Culianu, a promising academic, faced a series of terrifying threats that prompted him to confide in a colleague. He entrusted this colleague with a mysterious set of documents, fearing for his safety. Just a week later, Culianu was tragically murdered in a shocking incident that left many questions unanswered. The circumstances surrounding his death and the contents of those papers became intertwined, leading to a complex investigation into the possible connections between them. Secrets, Lies, and Consequences delves into this haunting narrative, exploring the life and legacy of a brilliant scholar caught in a web of intrigue.
As a Romanian expatriate, Culianu had built a reputation as a leading figure in religious studies at the University of Chicago, seen as the successor to his mentor, Mircea Eliade. However, the threats he received suggested a darker reality, possibly linked to his critical writings about the Romanian regime following the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. The tragic event of his murder raised alarms about the potential involvement of the Romanian secret police, as he had become a target for his outspoken views.
At the center of Secrets, Lies, and Consequences is the journey of the mysterious papers that Culianu left behind. These documents, which included controversial translations of Eliade's earlier works, reveal uncomfortable truths about Eliade's past and his connections to extremist ideologies. Author Bruce Lincoln meticulously unravels the threads of this story, shedding light on the motivations behind Culianu's murder and the implications of the secrets that lingered long after his untimely death.
[A] tantalizing whodunit... This thrilling saga sheds new light on a decades-old mystery. * Publishers Weekly *
A brilliant scholar of ancient myth discovers that he was surrounded by hidden aspects of his mentor's life and revisits the enigma of a colleague's murder, still unsolved after 30 years. Bruce Lincoln has undertaken a huge intellectual effort to unearth lies of the past and the conspiracies of the present, conspiracies he witnessed without knowing it, and evidence of which he even mistakenly destroyed. This is a detective enterprise, a deep mystery for which he suggests a novel solution, showing that sometimes reality can surpass fiction. * Moshe Idel, author of Mircea Eliade, from Magic to Myth *
Bruce Lincoln's approach to Mircea Eliade's youthful relationship with the radical right-wing, anti-Semitic Iron Guard, to his later attempts to conceal it, and to its consequences, is a model of historical analysis. Lincoln offers a close, in-depth reading of a series of documents from a tragic chapter in European history that throws an unexpected light on a case that has been at the center of a heated debate for decades. A page-turner of a book. * Carlo Ginzburg, Professor Emeritus, UCLA *
Bruce Lincoln's Secrets, Lies, and Consequences provides a unique and microscopic portrait of the intellectual Mircea Eliade's degree of involvement in the Romanian fascist movement of the 1930s. Thus, it brings a very dark period in modern Eastern European history to new light. * Robert D. Kaplan, author of In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond *
Lincoln offers an artful dissection of the possibilities, conducted with the objectivity of a historian and the subjectivity of someone who was there. * Harper's Magazine *
[A} riveting narrative...Lincoln lays out and analyzes this troubling material with meticulous objectivity, while also expressing empathy for those devastated by Eliade's web of secrets and lies. * Christian Century *
Interesting. [M]uch of 'Secrets, Lies, and Consequences' consists of Mr. Lincoln's painstaking analysis of the evidence and a meticulous documentation of how Culianu subtly tempered his spirited defense of Eliade. * The Wall Street Journal *
ISBN: 9780197689103
Dimensions: 164mm x 236mm x 21mm
Weight: 508g
200 pages