Written as a report to the chairman Yad Vashem, Israel’’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. A diligent historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II, and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims’’ lives, and the process by which enslaved Jews were forced to dispose of the remains.The job becomes a mission, and then an addiction. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the mass murder committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers - their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill.With the perspicuity of Kafka’’s The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo’’s White Noise, The Memory Monster takes a hard look at difficult truths 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 honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it?Praise for the Hebrew Edition:The most meaningful book ever written here about morals and victimhood. Alongside Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt, it forms a ‘‘holy trinity.’’" - Navit Barel"A punch in the gut … written with emotional credibility… . A very powerful book, a must, in my opinion." - Sarah Blau, IDF Radio"The book is gutsy, disconcerting, the kind of book it’’s hard to break away from until the final page." - Nahum Barnea, Yedioth Ahronoth “Sarid performs the most important act that literature can offer us - the story that he has written represents, to the same extent as it creates, what has been and what will be, in a process that enables thought about what there is, but also about what there could be… . The book weaves the sub-plots into its central course with satisfying skill. The various plot lines join together, reverberate and create contacts that it is possible to describe only in musical language… . A slim volume, butit provides a protracted read, and I carry it inside myself and wonder about it.” - Uri S. Cohen, Haaretz “As it moves forward, the story is gradually taken over by something delicate and reliable, something that also dovetails with the psychological process the book sets out to depict… . Sarid touches with credibility upon a world of fantasy, describes a familiar thing as a menacing hallucination.” - Yoni Livneh, Yedioth Ahronoth “A huge and bitter cry over the atrocities of the Holocaust, over its being possible at all, over the world that gave birth to it… . Sarid’’s rhetorical strength, and his very choice of a hero who researches the practical details of the annihilation, bring the book to its climax … Sarid deserves to be listened to, even if the mirror that he holds up to us distorts.” - Tsur Ehrlich, Hashiloach “Yishai Sarid does it again: His new book is different from its predecessor, but as important as them… . What are the lessons of the Holocaust? What should the ‘‘Memory Monster’’ tell us? What happens when it becomes an exhibit, a computer game, a movie? The novella The Memory Monster touches upon each of these questions, with wisdom, wit, and remarkable sensitivity. A must read!” - Ofra Offer Oren, Literary Blog “Yishai Sarid has done it for me once more. He clamped me to his new book, kept me tense throughout and left me stunned. Breathless. This is not at all a thriller, it is an imaginative novel that is so firmly planted in the reality of our lives, pokes around and breaks up our collective soul with such precision, and is so rich in the details of social and cultural processes, that it grips your throat and punches you in the gut, and excites the emotions and thoughts into a great storm that doesn’’t die down until long after you’’ve finished reading… . Sarid has written a slim book but it is overflowing and abundant both in the hero and what he has gone through, and no less in everything around him… . Sarid’’s keyboard is really a sharp surgeon’’s lancet with which he slaughters one of the most sacred cows that we have: memorialization of the Holocaust… . This is an important book to read, a breathtaking book, which will horrify all those who care, but don’’t bemistaken: it is also a fine novel, very readable, unputdownable, written in a style that is succinct and rich and precise. Read it. A must, and also an amazing reading experience. - Orit Harel,
