Antiquities and Other Stories

Description

'A writer innately drawn to paradox, and to the moral questions inherent in the relationships between richness and poverty, mind and body, history and imagination' Ali Smith 'As cunning and rich as anything Ozick's written' Wall Street Journal 'One of our era's central writers. About a man ensnared by history, Antiquities is at once a warning against the hazards of nostalgia and an invitation to take a longer view of how we got to where we are' The New Yorker 'Ozick's prose urges the breathless reader along, her love of language rolling excitedly through her sentences like an ocean wave' New York Review of Books I remember nothing. I remember everything. I believe everything. I believe nothing. In 1949, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie returns as a Trustee to the long-defunct boarding school that he attended as a child. There he is preparing a memoir about the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school, about his fascination with the Egyptian archaeological adventures of his distant cousin, about the passions of a boyhood friendship with named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil. In this novella, and the three stories published alongside it, one of our most preeminent writers weaves together myth and mania, history and illusion to capture the shifting meanings of the past. A W&N Essential

Cynthia Ozick's essays, novels and short stories have won numerous prizes and awards; THE PUTTERMESSER PAPERS was a finalist for the National Book Award and QUARREL & QUANDARY was a finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award in America. She lives in the New York City area.

One of the greatest fiction writers and critics alive today * The New York Times * Unequaled in her generation * Harold Bloom * A genuinely brilliant modern writer * Guardian * One of America's most important and inventive writers * Time Out * She is a writer innately drawn to paradox, and to the moral questions inherent in the relationships between richness and poverty, mind and body, history and imagination * Ali Smith * The most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our times * John Sutherland, New York Times Book Review * Beguiling. Ozick is adept at capturing the vicissitudes of fading memory or flashes of lucid insight. A fascinating portrait of isolation, memory, and loss * Publishers Weekly * A literary national treasure returns with a textured, gripping tale that peels back layers of antisemitism, with echoes of both A Separate Peace and the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer * O, the Oprah Magazine *