Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

What readers think of Night, plus links to write your own review.

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night

by Elie Wiesel
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (26):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 16, 2006, 144 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2006, 144 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

Page 2 of 4
There are currently 26 reader reviews for Night
Order Reviews by:

Write your own review!

TeXaS~CoWgIrL

Absolutly the Greatest!
This book inspired me to enjoy life as it is because you never know when death will come knocking at your door. He was brave and tough as stone. This is by far the best book I have ever read. I hope one day my kids will read this and feel the same.
nichole peters

night
This makes you really think about life in the holocaust . I just recently read it in school. I just wish he would tell a little more about his life after the holocaust but overall it shows how real the holocaust was.
BEH

Night
AMAZING! I loved this book. Wiesel packs so much power and meaning behind the words it's overwhelming, but in a good way.
Tharun ISB OR

Night
Many Holocaust survivors still remember their experiences in Concentration camps, with starvation, with no water. Night, by Elizer Wiesel, provides a short and moving account of his experience in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. This book was however not a realistic fiction, but it was a memoir of Wiesel’s memories of the concentration camp. The protagonist and the narrator of the story is Wiesel himself. The main Antagonists of the story are the Nazi. The main setting is in Auschwitz, a Concentration camp in Poland

   Night begins in 1941, when Elie is twelve years old, having grown up in a little town called Sighet in Transylvania; in 1944, Germans are already in the town of Sighet and they set up ghettos for the Jews. After a while, the Germans begin the deportation of the Jews to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Once they arrived in At Birkenau, a place in Auschwitz, Elie separates from his mothers and sisters, and stays with his father. Elie starts to make friends, and tries to survive in the concentration camp. He also starts to make a strong bonding with his father and they start living for each other. After one year of suffering, Elie’s father dies of Dysentery, and Elie is forced to take care of himself. In the end, he looks at himself in the mirror, instead he looks at a “corpse” in the mirror, and he sees how much he has changed the past one year.

   When I first saw this book, I picked this because of the author of the book, Elie Wiesel, a famous holocaust survivor. I thought that this story was going to be an ordinary child labor story. But after reading this I was feeling more matured, and I can understand how he missed his childhood. I also felt that I was not one of the unluckiest one to face such a tragedy. Night is not a normal tragedy story, but a Story starts gloomy, and Ends gloomy. But the biggest thing in the end is that, Elie realizes that the youth is no longer in him. He says that he has changed a lot, and sees an adult in him. “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” (pg.115, passage 6) Some parts of the book made me feel sorry the Jews who died. The part where he was talking about watching his dad dying was the most piercing, and touching part. “No prayers were said over his tomb. No Candle lit in his memory. His last words had been my name. He had called it out to me but I had not answered. I did not weep, and deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might found something like: Free at last! …” (pg.112, passage 4 and 5) These quotes touched me and made me to go in that story. After reading this book, I asked myself these questions: What if I was in that same situation that Elie Wiesel faced? How would I react to it? On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this book a nine. This book affected me so much, and also made me more religious.

   Reviews from the Oprah Winfrey book club: “A true story that we would rather not think about, but need to hear and remember.” I agree with this because I never read such a violent and emotional book than this, but we need to hear and remember these stories so then we don’t do the same mistakes again. “Night is not, however, primarily about making the reader sad or dwelling on the past. It is about remembering. Wiesel wrote his memoir so that we would remember what happened and remember what civilized humans are capable of.” And also this part of the segment says: “Remembering, however, is not a fruitless task. We remember so that we can tackle the big questions honestly and so we can change” This is what happened to me while reading the book. Overall Night is the story of Elie Wiesel, a survivor whose belief of god and humanity died during holocaust.
na2

good book
This book is really awesome!!!
Elie taught me about life through this book........
Libby Carr

Night by Elie Wiesel
I thought that Night by Elie Wiesel was a great book. It was short and sweet (well maybe not too sweet) since it is about the Holocaust. Once I started reading it I could not put it down. It kept me on my toes because I did not know what was going to happen next, partly because the families in the memoir also did not know themselves. I had some background on the Holocaust, but not a lot. Even with the little that I do know I was able to follow what Elie was explaining and also learn some new things along the way.



Elie is very straight forward in his style of telling the events that are taking place. He is not going to try to censor it or cover it up because it is a story that the world needs to hear.Night begins with some Jews from Sighet, Transylvania being deported, one being Moishe the Beadle, Elies teacher. Moishe the Beadle was one of the lucky ones who had escaped and returned back to Sighet, but who had also been changed forever. He tried to warn the townspeople of Hitler and the horrors what are taking place. No one believed his stories and they just thought that he had lost his mind. But then it happens, slowly the Gestapo come in and take over the town and then eventually deport the Jews of Sighet. When they finally get to their first destination the words, Men to the left! Women to the right! were shouted by the SS officers. This is the last moment that Elie will ever see his mother and sister. He is forced to become a man at the age of 15.



Night is a memoir about the relationship between a father and son. Their relationship centers on each other. As the days go by their relationship builds and becomes stronger. I could relate to this relationship with my own family. I sort of put myself in his shoes and tried to relate to it. The main theme of the memoir is survival. While most of the prisoners only looked out for themselves, Elie and his father were always looking out for each other. They did whatever it took for them both to survive and with out each other they probably would have given up. Not only did the Nazis take away Elies family and faith, but they also took away his childhood. I could keep telling all about this book, but I want you to read it and feel how it draws you in.
Elizabeth Vanwig

GREAT
Elie's never dying spirit and courage tugs at your heart and lets you know in your life you can get though anything.
Geoff

GREAT BOOK
I first read night in 8th grade. I have recently reread the book and rediscovered what a true masterpiece it is. Night is one of the most chilling books I have ever read. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a great book to read. It is one of the BEST books I have read.

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Book Jacket
The Rose Arbor
by Rhys Bowen
An investigation into a girl's disappearance uncovers a mystery dating back to World War II in a haunting novel of suspense.
Who Said...

The moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.