Persistence of Memory

Persistence of Memory

A Novel

Tony Eprile

WINNER OF THE KORET JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

Paul Sweetbread, a Jewish South African boy with a perfect memory, grows up in a family that would rather forget. Joining the army, he films the secret wars in Namibia and Angola, then must defend what he saw before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Funny, sharp, and morally searching, this Koret Jewish Book Award winner explores complicity, silence, and memory. A natural for book club discussion.

Memory is the book’s central subject: who keeps it, who suppresses it, and who has the power to rewrite it. The novel draws a parallel between the Afrikaner state’s repression, censorship and propaganda and the way Paul’s own story is threatened with being overwritten by others’ versions. It suggests that denying the possibility of knowing the truth is a way of dodging personal responsibility. Gently satirical and often funny, it has been compared to Catch-22 and to Proust for its sensory detail.

About the Author

Tony Eprile was born in Johannesburg in 1955. He immigrated to the United States in 1972. He is the author of the novel The Persistence of Memory, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and winner of the Koret International Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His story collection Temporary Sojourner and Other South African Stories was also a New York Times Notable Book. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lesley University, Williams College, and Bennington, and his writing and photography have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. He lives in Bennington, Vermont.

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