The Greek

Der Greeche is a 1973 social novel by the journalist and writer Pierre Rey and his first novel ever, followed by a number of other successful novels by Rey.

content

The novel episodically describes the life of the international jet set in the mid-1970s, especially a group of people who gathered around the fictional character Socrates Satrapolous , a Greek shipowner and billionaire , for whose design the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis served as a model. Onassis' love affair with the opera singer Maria Callas is reflected in the relationship that the married satrapolous of the novel has with the pianist Olympia Menelas . In the fictional characters Scott and Peggy Baltimore , John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy can easily be recognized. Scott is running for president of the United States and is shot out of a high-rise like Kennedy in a car parade. Peggy then marries Satrapolous. When his son Achilles had an accident in an airplane, Satrapolous lost his life trying to break into the cabin of the plane that had crashed into the sea while the machine was being recovered. It remains to be seen whether he is acting with suicidal intent. The novel ends with Peggy marrying Kallenberg, Satrapolous' brother-in-law and greatest competitor.

Subject

The novel has no actual plot in the sense of a classic plot , but describes in an entertaining and unobtrusive critical way the life of the upper ten thousand, which is characterized by waste, luxury , boredom, excessive alcohol and amorous adventures and passions, but also by social competition and financial intrigue .

output

• Der Greek , MTV Molden-Taschenbuch-Verlag, EROICA Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Vienna-Munich, 1974, ISBN 3-217-05003-7

Web links

• The Greek in the German National Library