Antiquities and Other Stories Audiobook By Cynthia Ozick cover art

Antiquities and Other Stories

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Antiquities and Other Stories

By: Cynthia Ozick
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Saskia Maarleveld
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

From one of our most preeminent writers, a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past and how our experience colors those meanings, now alongside four previously uncollected stories.

In Antiquities, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, one of the seven elderly trustees of the now-defunct (for 34 years) Temple Academy for Boys, is preparing a memoir of his days at the school, intertwined with the troubling distractions 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's heritage - in particular, his illustrious cousin, the renowned archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie - he reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter with the oddly named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypt's Elephantine Island.

Included alongside this wondrous tale, touched by unsettling irony and with the elusive flavor of a Kafka parable, are four additional stories in Cynthia Ozick's brilliant, distinctive voice, weaving myth and mania, history and illusion: The Coast of New Zealand, The Bloodline of the Alkanas, Sin, and A Hebrew Sibyl.

©2022 Cynthia Ozick (P)2022 Random House Audio
Fiction Jewish Short Stories
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“A delight.... Richly patterned and strongly colored.” (The New York Times)

“Ozick’s prose urges the breathless reader along, her love of language rolling excitedly through her sentences like an ocean wave. Ozick’s new novel, Antiquities, moves softly, with a tenderness and quiet intimacy.” (The New York Review of Books)

“Indisputable is Ozick’s exquisite artistry in rendering yet another resonant and unsettling tale.” (The Washington Post)

What listeners say about Antiquities and Other Stories

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing

I was looking forward to this book. I’ve read essays by Ozick and was hopeful of this venture in prose.

Antiquities was a pretty satisfying story. The plot and characterization were of reasonably high quality. There was a nice sense of mystery, and the outcome had its flair and drama and sense of meaning. Not a great story, but a highly acceptable one.

Sadly, I can’t give the other stories even an average rating. I was preparing a bit of a biting critique. But I find myself now not wanting to be mean or hurtful. I’ll just say that I don’t think they rise to the level of the work of a fine writer.

I hope you can find a basis to disagree if you proceed to buy.

As to the performance, I’d give good marks to the reading of Antiquities and inadequate to the others.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!