Price £9.99
Format Paperback and ebook
Published 14 February 2013
Length 392 pages
ISBN 9781905559565
ISBN 9781905559572 (ebook)
Click to order
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The Retrospective
A.B. Yehoshua
Translated from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman
An ageing film director, Yair Moses, has been invited to the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiagode Compostela to attend a retrospective of his early work. As he and Ruth, his leading actress and former muse, settle into their room at the parador, Moses notices a painting depicting the classical story of an elderly prisoner nursing at the breast of a young woman. For the first time in decades, Moses recalls a similar scene from one of his early films, which led to his dramatic estrangement from his screenwriter, Trigano.
Trigano’s spirit haunts the retrospective, as the director and actress re-live each film. They question artistic decisions and are surprised at how differently each remembers the past, slowly revealing to each other past reasons for decisions taken at the time.
A troubled Moses decides to seek out the elusive Trigano to settle their differences, and to propose a new collaboration. But the reluctant screenwriter demands an outrageous price for this reconciliation: Moses must commit to a deeply disturbing act of atonement. Ultimately, reality and the sublime mingle when Moses has an epiphany, as he nears the end of his quest and the source of his imagination.
Searching, witty and trenchant, this work by an internationally respected and original writer is a meditation on the roots of artistic inspiration, the limits and the truth of memory, and the struggle for artistic creation.
A.B. Yehoshua
Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A.B. Yehoshua was the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continued to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Yehoshua died in June 2022, aged 85.
Visit our Remembering A.B. Yehoshua page to read some of the countless tributes and obituaries that have been written to celebrate Yehoshua’s incredible life and career.
About Stuart Schoffman
Stuart Schoffman was a writer, translator, educator, historian, screenwriter, humourist, a shrewd observer of people and a fount of knowledge which we joyfully shared for many years. Stuart died in November 2021 after battling a serious illness. He enriched our lives personally and professionally and we shall miss him deeply