The Retreat

About this book

The year is 1937. On a remote hilltop some distance from Vienna stands a hotel called The Retreat. Founded by a man who is determined to cleanse himself and his guests of all "Jewish traits " it is a resort of assimilation with daily activities that include lessons in how to look talk act--in short how to pass--as a gentile. But with Hitler on the march the possibilities of both assimilation and retreat are quickly fading for the hotels patrons men and women who are necessarily--and horrifically--blind to their fate. Mordant shrewd and elegantly written The Retreat is a moving story of people forbidden to retreat from themselves by the writer whom Irving Howe called "one of the best novelists alive."