Aharon Appelfeld (Hebrew: אהרון אפלפלד) (born February 16, 1932 in Czernowitz, Romania) is an Israeli novelist.

Once again, Appelfeld masterfully uses the techniques of indirection and omission to create a story of real emotional impact. Bartfuss is a survivor of the camps now living in Israel who "somewhere in the sands of Italy" lost his great dream. Ever since, he has struggled between his desire to forget and need to remember. He is distanced from everyone, including his wife, who he feels cannot truly understand since she did not experience what he did. Yet those who do understand have emerged from the experience so emotionally scarred that they see intimacy as something to fear. At one point Bartfuss cries out that he "should have been more generous. People who went through the Holocaust should be generous. Do you understand me?" A magnificent novel from someone who does.