A
New York Times Book Review
Editors’ Choice
Winner, 2012 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
“The greatest Hebrew novelist.” —
Jewish Review of Books
An aging Israeli film director has been invited to the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela for a retrospective of his work. When Yair Moses arrives, a painting over his bed triggers a distant memory from one of his early films: a scene that caused a rift with his brilliant but difficult screenwriter. Upon his return to Israel, Moses decides to travel to the south to look for his elusive former partner and propose a new collaboration. But the screenwriter demands a price for it that will have strange and lasting consequences.
A searching and original novel by one of the world’s most esteemed writers,
The Retrospective
is a meditation on mortality and intimacy, on the limits of memory and the struggle of artistic creation.
“[
] moved me deeply.” — Vivian Gornick,
The Nation
“[Yehoshua] achieves an autumnal tone as he ruminates on memory’s slippery hold on life and on art.” —
The New Yorker