Author(s): Yishai Sarid

Novel | Translated fiction | Jewish History

'A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present' The New York Times

Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, the unnamed narrator of The Memory Monster recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination, guiding tours through the death camps. The job becomes a mission, and then a dangerous obsession.With great perspicuity and the bitterest black humour, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions 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 honour the suffering of our forebears without becoming consumed by it?

Review: 'A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present' - The New York Times

'A brilliant, challenging, and uncompromising novel' - Jewish Currents

'A bracing corrective to the recent literary fashion for Holocaust kitsch. It takes a fearless and astringent look at the use and abuse of Holocaust memory and emerges with answers every bit as challenging and uncomfortable as this topic demands' - William Sutcliffe

'Sarid's incisive critique of Holocaust memorialization, the corruption within it, and the perverse forms of nationalism it can engender is courageous.... Anything but moralistic, it leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions about the complex politics of Holocaust memorialization and its many layers of irony.... Nuanced and subtle at every level.' - LA Review of Books

'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.' - The Times of Israel

Author Biography: Yishai Sarid is an active lawyer and arbitrator in Tel Aviv. Alongside his legal career, he has written six novels, which have been translated into ten languages and have won literary prizes including the Bernstein Literary Award and Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere

Yardenne Greenspan is a writer and Hebrew translator. Her translations have been published by Restless Books, St. Martin's Press, Akashic and others and are forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She is a regular contributor to Ploughshares.