Description

From one of our most preeminent writers a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past and how our experience colors those meanings now alongside four previously uncollected stories

In Antiquities Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie one of the seven elderly trustees of the nowdefunct for thirtyfour years Temple Academy for Boys is preparing a memoir of his days at the school intertwined with the troubling distractions of present events As he navigates with faltering recall between the subtle antiSemitism that pervaded the schools ethos and his fascination with his own familys heritagein particular his illustrious cousin the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petriehe reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter with the oddly named BenZion Elefantin a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypts Elephantine Island

Included alongside this wondrous tale touched by unsettling irony and with the elusive flavor of a Kafka parable are four additional stories in Cynthia Ozicks brilliant distinctive voice weaving myth and mania history and illusion The Coast of New Zealand The Bloodline of the Alkanas Sin and A Hebrew Sibyl