The Memory Monster

Description

Written as a report to the chairman Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. A diligent historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II, and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims' lives, and the process by which enslaved Jews were forced to dispose of the remains. The job becomes a mission, and then an addiction. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the mass murder committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers--their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill. With the perspicuity of Kafka's The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo's White Noise, The Memory Monster takes a hard look at difficult truths that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it? Praise for the Hebrew Edition: "The most meaningful book ever written here about morals and victimhood. Alongside Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt, it forms a 'holy trinity.'" --Navit Barel "A punch in the gut ... written with emotional credibility.... A very powerful book, a must, in my opinion." --Sarah Blau, IDF Radio "The book is gutsy, disconcerting, the kind of book it's hard to break away from until the final page." --Nahum Barnea, Yedioth Ahronoth "Sarid performs the most important act that literature can offer us--the story that he has written represents, to the same extent as it creates, what has been and what will be, in a process that enables thought about what there is, but also about what there could be.... The book weaves the sub-plots into its central course with satisfying skill. The various plot lines join together, reverberate and create contacts that it is possible to describe only in musical language.... A slim volume, but it provides a protracted read, and I carry it inside myself and wonder about it." --Uri S. Cohen, Haaretz "As it moves forward, the story is gradually taken over by something delicate and reliable, something that also dovetails with the psychological process the book sets out to depict.... Sarid touches with credibility upon a world of fantasy, describes a familiar thing as a menacing hallucination." --Yoni Livneh, Yedioth Ahronoth "A huge and bitter cry over the atrocities of the Holocaust, over its being possible at all, over the world that gave birth to it.... Sarid's rhetorical strength, and his very choice of a hero who researches the practical details of the annihilation, bring the book to its climax ... Sarid deserves to be listened to, even if the mirror that he holds up to us distorts." --Tsur Ehrlich, Hashiloach "Yishai Sarid does it again: His new book is different from its predecessor, but as important as them.... What are the lessons of the Holocaust? What should the 'Memory Monster' tell us? What happens when it becomes an exhibit, a computer game, a movie? The novella The Memory Monster touches upon each of these questions, with wisdom, wit, and remarkable sensitivity. A must read!" --Ofra Offer Oren, Literary Blog "Yishai Sarid has done it for me once more. He clamped me to his new book, kept me tense throughout and left me stunned. Breathless. This is not at all a thriller, it is an imaginative novel that is so firmly planted in the reality of our lives, pokes around and breaks up our collective soul with such precision, and is so rich in the details of social and cultural processes, that it grips your throat and punches you in the gut, and excites the emotions and thoughts into a great storm that doesn't die down until long after you've finished reading.... Sarid has written a slim book but it is overflowing and abundant both in the hero and what he has gone through, and no less in everything around him.... Sarid's keyboard is really a sharp surgeon's lancet with which he slaughters one of the most sacred cows that we have: memorialization of the Holocaust.... This is an important book to read, a breathtaking book, which will horrify all those who care, but don't be mistaken: it is also a fine novel, very readable, unputdownable, written in a style that is succinct and rich and precise. Read it. A must, and also an amazing reading experience. --Orit Harel, Literary Blog "Challenging and subversive ... A focused and thought-provoking novel." --Talma Admon, Maariv "These are questions that must be asked: would you have survived? How would you have survived? What would you have agreed to do in order to survive?... Sarid manages to ask these questions without falling into didactic pomposity and manages to track the answers without fearing what he'll find at the end of the road, and the reader is invited to follow at a measured pace and with a pounding heart.... This road is intriguing and horrifying and Sarid sketches it with wisdom and skill, up to the final moment." --Meital Sharon, Literary Blog "This is an amazingly courageous book, a must-read for parents, educators, politicians and anyone who wishes to expand the views seen through his windows." --Inbar Ushpiz, Saloona "A fascinating, recommended book." --Shiri Zuck, Channel 2 TV "The pellucid language, ostensibly quotidian but so sensitive and un-shallow, captivated me.... It is impossible not to salute the detailed and meticulous research.... The book is not only readable, moving and intriguing, it is also a compulsory document for all those who, like myself, run away from anything to do with the Holocaust." --Ito Aviram, Hitrashmut "Yishai Sarid is a gifted writer ... I believe every word that he writes. There isn't a single superfluous word in The Memory Monster.... It left me breathless.... I foresee (and hope) that this book will stir up some trenchant debates. This is a gripping book." --Sarit Flain, Literary Blog "The book is written with integrity, minimalism and precision, creating great credibility.... A truly resounding book.... A very important document on the subject of memory.... One of the most piercing books about the Holocaust that I have read." --David Simhon, Olam Katan "Do not allow the slimness of this volume to mislead you; it is a disturbing book and after you have read it, it does not let simply move on to the next book. Rather, you need a little more time to think about its contents and to let them subside ... A gripping and important book." --Meira Barnea Goldberg, Melabes

About the Author: Yishai Sarid was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1965. He is the son of senior politician and journalist Yossi Sarid. Between 1974-1977, he lived with his family in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanon border. Sarid was recruited to Israeli Army in 1983 and served for five years. During his service, he finished the IDF's officers school and served as an intelligence officer. He studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During 1994-1997, he worked for the Government as an Assistant District Attorney in Tel-Aviv, prosecuting criminal cases. Sarid has a Public Administration Master's Degree (MPA) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1999). Nowadays he is an active lawyer and arbitrator, practicing mainly civil and administrative law. His law office is located in Tel-Aviv. Alongside his legal career, Sarid writes literature, and so far he has published six novels. His novels have been translated into ten languages and have won literary prizes. Sarid is married to Dr. Racheli Sion-Sarid, a critical care pediatrician, and they have three children. About the Translator:Yardenne Greenspan is a writer and Hebrew translator. Her translations have been published by Restless Books, St. Martin's Press, Akashic, Syracuse University, New Vessel Press, and Amazon Crossing, and are forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Yardenne's writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Haaretz, Guernica, Literary Hub, Blunderbuss, Apogee, The Massachusetts Review, Asymptote, and Words Without Borders, among other publications. She has an MFA from Columbia University and is a regular contributor to Ploughshares.

Praise for The Memory Monster: "A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present.... Other writers have described well the reverberations of trauma (like David Grossman in See Under: Love) but few have taken this further step, to wonder out loud about the ways the Holocaust may have warped the collective conscience of a nation, making every moment existential, a constant panic not to become victims again." -Gal Beckerman, The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "Award-winning Israeli novelist Sarid's latest work is a slim but powerful novel, rendered beautifully in English by translator Greenspan.... Propelled by the narrator's distinctive voice, the novel is an original variation on one of the most essential themes of post-Holocaust literature: While countless writers have asked the question of where, or if, humanity can be found within the profoundly inhumane, Sarid incisively shows how preoccupation and obsession with the inhumane can take a toll on one's own humanity.... it is, if not an indictment of Holocaust memorialization, a nuanced and trenchant consideration of its layered politics. Ultimately, Sarid both refuses to apologize for Jewish rage and condemns the nefarious forms it sometimes takes. A bold, masterful exploration of the banality of evil and the nature of revenge, controversial no matter how it is read." -Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review "A brilliant, challenging, and uncompromising novel.... It lays bare the hard truth, often obscured by a too-hopeful vision of humanity, that Holocaust education has not led to a softer, kinder world, and 'Never Again' merely means 'never again for us.'" -Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents "Award-winning Yishai Sarid's slender, elegantly translated novel grapples with some mighty questions, among them the myriad ways in which the Holocaust might be seen to have shaped Israel's culture, and the complex existential politics of memorialisation and Holocaust education.... Where the book excels is in its readiness to court controversy without surrendering nuance, and in place of moralising it offers questioning that's as necessary as it is unsettling." -Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian "The Memory Monster is one of the great Israeli novels to have been published in translation in recent years. Sarid's book is wonderfully subversive, darkly humorous; riveting, challenging, and thought-provoking. The voice-captured well in English by Yardenne Greenspan-is finely balanced, teetering on the edge as the memory monster sinks its teeth deeper and deeper into Sarid's protagonist. The Memory Monster is a novel that demands to be read and deserves our attention." -Liam Hoare, Fathom "[A] record of a breakdown, an impassioned consideration of memory and its risks, and a critique of Israel's use of the Holocaust to shape national identity.... Sarid's unrelenting examination of how narratives of the Holocaust are shaped makes for much more than the average confessional tale." -Publishers Weekly "Sarid's incisive critique of Holocaust memorialization, the corruption within it, and the perverse forms of nationalism it can engender is courageous.... It unabashedly critiques the link between Holocaust remembrance culture and the tendency of certain strains of Jewish and particularly Israeli culture to overrate the centrality of aggressive survivorship to Jewish identity, and how this culture in turn nurtures the militarization, settler colonialism, and Islamophobia that combine to create the perfect storm of violent right-wing nationalism.... Nuanced and subtle at every level." -Miranda Cooper, Los Angeles Review of Books "The Memory Monster is shattering, brilliant, disturbing, and very important. Sarid's background as a lawyer makes the narrator's arguments-and his falling apart-all the more disturbing when his logic fails. How can the horrors of the Holocaust be taught, remembered? A powerful novel." -Lynne Tillman, author of Men and Apparitions "The short but powerful novel raises the question of how far we let the horrors of the past infiltrate our present-day lives.... The Memory Monster is not an easy book to read but its message is important to hear." -Ellis Shuman, The Times of Israel "Numerous powerful passages evoke [the narrator's] increasingly vivid interior experiences of what happened at the camps.... The book feels like real life in its humble details, but even more so in its implied conclusion that no ultimate actions, no final solutions, are ever truly available to us.... It makes a valuable contribution to the present generation of Holocaust literature. It adds to the hope that the memory of the monster may linger unto the nth generation." -Jon Sobel, Blogcritics