Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.


From Library Journal
Wiesel's perennial best-selling memoir-cum-novel of his year spent in four concentration camps as a 15-year-old during the Holocaust was first published in 1958 but never recorded. However, Wiesel, who had long opposed a recording, changed his mind and endorsed this version, read by actor Jeffrey Rosenblatt. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"To  the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him  so moving a record." -- Alfred Kazin

  "Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively  metamorphosed it into art." -- Curt Leviant,  Saturday Review





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


Card catalog description
An autobiographical narrative, in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps.


From the Publisher
Night -- A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

"To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record." -- Alfred Kazin

"Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art." -- Curt Leviant, Saturday Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Night — A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

SYNOPSIS

An enduring classic of Holocaust literature, Night offers a personal and unforgettable account of the appalling horrors of Hitler's reign of terror. Through the eyes of 14-year-old Eliezer, we behold the tragic fate of the Jews from the little town of Sighet. Even as they are marched toward the blazing crematory at the camp's "reception center" does the terrible truth sink in.

Narrator George Guidall intensifies the emotional impact as blind hope turns to utter horror. His performance captures the profound agony of young Eliezer as he witnesses the suffering and death of his family and loses all that he holds sacred.

FROM THE CRITICS

Curt Leviant

"Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art." -- Saturday Review

The New York Times

"A slim volume of terrifying power."

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"As a numan document, Night is almost unbearably painful, and certainly beyond criticism." -- Commentary — A Alvarez

"To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record." — Alfred Kazin