A poverty-stricken, teetotaling, vegetarian religious zealot living in an unnamed central European country—a man of Greek heritage who also happens, in middle age, to be a virgin—places a personals ad seeking a marriage partner. The woman who answers the ad falls in love with him (we can’t at first imagine why), as he with her (this we can easily imagine), and from that point on his fortunes abruptly and radically change for the better. Like all people who have suffered a lifetime of misfortune, Arnolph Archilochos distrusts his good luck, suspecting (correctly) that it’s not what it seems to be.Read More