The Retreat
1984
First Published
3.46
Average Rating
164
Number of Pages
The year is 1937. On a remote hilltop some distance from Vienna stands a hotel called The Retreat. Founded by a man who is determined to cleanse himself and his guests of all "Jewish traits," it is a resort of assimilation, with daily activities that include lessons in how to look, talk, act—in short, how to pass—as a gentile. But with Hitler on the march, the possibilities of both assimilation and retreat are quickly fading for the hotel's patrons, men and women who are necessarily—and horrifically—blind to their fate. Mordant, shrewd, and elegantly written, The Retreat is a moving story of people forbidden to retreat from themselves, by the writer whom Irving Howe called "one of the best novelists alive."
Avg Rating
3.46
Number of Ratings
74
5 STARS
14%
4 STARS
32%
3 STARS
43%
2 STARS
8%
1 STARS
3%
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Author
Aharon Appelfeld
Author · 26 books
AHARON APPELFELD is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Until the Dawn's Light and The Iron Tracks (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award) and The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger). Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Bocaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and Yeshiva University.
