Antiquities

From one of our most pre eminent writers, a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past, and how our experience colors those meanings.Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven surviving trustees of the now defunct (for 34 years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with a description of present events. As he navigates, with faltering recall, between the subtle anti-semitism that pervaded the school's ethos and his fascination with his own family history—in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie (check out his Wikipedia entry!), the source of his interest in antiquity—he reconstructs the story of his encounter from his school days with a younger student named Ben-Zion Elefantin, who seems to belong to a lost ancient Jewish sect. From this seed emerges one of Ozick's most wondrous tales, one that displays her delight in Jamesian irony and the mythical flavor of...