The long-awaited memoirs of Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, tell the story of his happy childhood in the Carpathian Mountains, his subsequent years of hell in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and his post-war life in France, where he discovered his voice as a writer. Highly recommended.


From Publishers Weekly
Wiesel's immensely moving, unforgettable memoir has the searing intensity of his novels and autobiographical tales. Before his family was arrested by Nazis in their Romanian village and transported by cattle car to Auschwitz in 1944, the devout, studious future Nobel Peace laureate had plunged into Jewish mysticism, hoping that his Kabbalistic prayers and formulas might ward off impending tragedy. In the concentration camps, he came to know his formerly aloof and deeply loved father, Shlomo, a rabbi, whose death in Buchenwald in 1945 left Wiesel, then 16, numb. Living in a French orphanage, he learned of the deaths of his mother and younger sister, and was reunited with the two sisters who survived. Wiesel, who gradually recovered his religious fervor, wrestles with the problem of having faith in the post-Holocaust era. As a Paris-based journalist aiding the Jewish resistance movement in Palestine, he discovered his calling?to testify to Nazi genocide, to justify his own survival. Moving to New York in the mid-1950s as correspondent for an Israeli paper, he covered civil rights struggles, the Eichmann trial in Israel and the 1967 Six Day War, befriended Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion and supported persecuted Soviet Jews. His ascetic bachelor existence ended when he fell in love with and married Marion in 1969. He writes also of his formative friendships with Yiddish poet/thinker Abraham Yeoshua Heschel, Talmudic scholars Gershom Scholem and Saul Leiberman and itinerant mystic rabbi Mordechai Rosenbaum ("Shushani"). This haunting, impassioned book will make you cry yet, somehow, leave you renewed, with a cautious hope for humanity's future. Photos. First serial to Parade. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Novelist, Nobel Peace laureate, and Holocaust survivor Wiesel offers here his long-awaited memoirs. He begins with his boyhood in the Carpathian Mountains of Central Europe and his uprooting and transport by cattle car to the barbed wire infernos of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Here Wiesel describes the horror of being among Jews bound for the death camps as the war was drawing to a close. Concluding this portion of the memoir is a moving meditation on the courage to believe when one is in the shadow of the Holocaust. He describes in following chapters his schooling in postwar France, his decision to become a journalist, and his travels to Israel and throughout the world, including a moving return to the Romanian village of his boyhood. At one point in the book, Wiesel reflects on the central dilemma of writing about the Holocaust: mere words cannot portray the tragedy, yet the writer who has experienced it must write so that others will remember. An exquisite book, recommended for all collections.-?Mark Weber, Kent State Univ. Lib., OhioCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Elie Wiesel tells the story of his childhood; touches upon his life in the concentration camps; and recounts his subsequent efforts and successes as a writer, journalist and novelist. Wiesel tells the story of his life, dreams and explorations in a quiet, even voice. His European accent adds a rich flavor that would be missing if another had read this tale. Background music accents the dramatic events in Wiesel's life. Heart- and soul-rending, the narration fits the tale perfectly, bringing tears to the eyes of the listener. Unfortunately, the abridgment, while not affecting the story, does a great disservice to the life and memories of this influential writer. M.B.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Nobel laureate Wiesel is the collective consciousness of the Holocaust, the premier voice of moral rectitude concerning the treatment of Jews in the twentieth century. With an expected poignancy and deft expressiveness and a commendable avoidance of self-righteousness, he turns now to memoir writing, revisiting the formative places, figures, and events in his life. Born in a "typical shtetl" in what was then Romania, Wiesel experienced the Holocaust firsthand in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Orphaned, he traveled to France upon war's end and there received his education. He embarked on a journalism career at the same time that Israel was established, and those two ever-so-important factors in his life were meshed when he was posted back to Paris and then to New York as a foreign correspondent for an Israeli newspaper. Journalism was an easy segue into bookwriting, and his latest one will be a source of supreme pleasure for his widespread readership. Brad Hooper


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


From the Inside Flap
From his early years with his loving Jewish family to the horrors of Auschwitz to his life as a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Elie Wiesel tells his story. Passionate and poignant, All Rivers Run to the Sea is an unforgettable book of love and rage, doubt and faith, despair and trust, and ultimately, of wisdom. of photos.

ANNOTATION

Dragged through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel emerged a bloodless adolescent, a mute spirit, with no homeland. In this passionate, poignant, and inspiring book, the Nobel Peace Laureate looks back at those years and what followed, including his search for love despite human evil and his deep devotion to Israel. of photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The long-anticipated memoirs of the novelist and Nobel Peace Laureate open with a child's entry into hell. We see the boy, Elie Wiesel, torn from a traditional and loving Jewish family life in a Carpathian village and dragged through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. We see him emerge a bloodless adolescent, a mute spirit, with no homeland. In his passionate, poignant, and moving account of those years - and the amazing years that followed - a remarkable life unfolds.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Wiesel's immensely moving, unforgettable memoir has the searing intensity of his novels and autobiographical tales. Before his family was arrested by Nazis in their Romanian village and transported by cattle car to Auschwitz in 1944, the devout, studious future Nobel Peace laureate had plunged into Jewish mysticism, hoping that his Kabbalistic prayers and formulas might ward off impending tragedy. In the concentration camps, he came to know his formerly aloof and deeply loved father, Shlomo, a rabbi, whose death in Buchenwald in 1945 left Wiesel, then 16, numb. Living in a French orphanage, he learned of the deaths of his mother and younger sister, and was reunited with the two sisters who survived. Wiesel, who gradually recovered his religious fervor, wrestles with the problem of having faith in the post-Holocaust era. As a Paris-based journalist aiding the Jewish resistance movement in Palestine, he discovered his calling-to testify to Nazi genocide, to justify his own survival. Moving to New York in the mid-1950s as correspondent for an Israeli paper, he covered civil rights struggles, the Eichmann trial in Israel and the 1967 Six Day War, befriended Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion and supported persecuted Soviet Jews. His ascetic bachelor existence ended when he fell in love with and married Marion in 1969. He writes also of his formative friendships with Yiddish poet/thinker Abraham Yeoshua Heschel, Talmudic scholars Gershom Scholem and Saul Leiberman and itinerant mystic rabbi Mordechai Rosenbaum (``Shushani''). This haunting, impassioned book will make you cry yet, somehow, leave you renewed, with a cautious hope for humanity's future. Photos. First serial to Parade. (Dec.)

Library Journal