THE AGENCY FOR HOLOCAUST EXTRAS

Provocative, insightful, and surprisingly entertaining, The Agency for Holocaust Extras is an extraordinary debut novel about family, identity, secrets and the deceptive narratives people adopt to survive.

Naama is obsessed. For her the Holocaust is not just a historical trauma but a real and present danger. She imagines herself hunted by the Nazis, prepares food and refuge for the inevitable future and sleeps with her face pressed against the pillow to make her nose appear less Jewish. A documentary filmmaker, she stumbles upon the story of a unique casting agency that recruits the thin, frail and emaciated to serve as extras in Holocaust-themed movies. She begins filming Amir, one of the extras, and joins him on a film set in Munich. There the novel's other protagonist, a young German man named Thomas Kunert, is also obsessed—with his seemingly perfect family and the undeniable fact that he has never fit in it. Tormented by his idealized image of his father, Thomas begins following him around as part of a university photography project. When his father meets with a film producer and seems to be somehow involved in the life an older actor, Thomas finds a job as a still photographer on the
producer's movie set and tries to do some sleuthing. In Munich, WWII is reenacted on set and the lives of Naama and Thomas collide as the mystery around the older actor begins to unfold.

Shay Zeller is an author, journalist and scriptwriter. He is a graduate of the Tel Aviv University faculty of Humanities and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. In 2002 Zeller had won the annual Haaretz short story competition. He published his first book in 2007. His second book, THE AGENCY FOR HOLOCAUST EXTRAS appeared in 2014. Zeller lives with his wife and two children in Modi'in.