The Retreat

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 hotel’s 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.”