ANTIQUITIES

FROM ONE OF OUR MOST PREEMINENT WRITERS, a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past, and how our experience colors those meanings.
Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven surviving trustees of the now defunct (for thirty-four years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with a description of present events. As he navigates, with faltering recall, between the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school's ethos and his fascination with his own family history--in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the source of his interest in antiquity--he reconstructs the story of his encounter from his school days with an older student named Ben-Zion Elefantin, who seems to belong to a lost ancient Jewish sect.
From this seed emerges one of Cynthia Ozick's most wondrous tales, one that displays her delight in Jamesian irony and the mythical flavor of a Kafka parable, woven into her own distinct voice.

CYNTHIA OZICK is the author of such acclaimed works as THE PUTTERMESSER PAPERS, THE SHAWL, FOREIGN BODIES, and THE MESSIAH OF STOCKHOLM. Ozick has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Man Booker International Prize.