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Summary and Reviews of Night by Elie Wiesel

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

Book Summary

An autobiographical narrative in which the author describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, watching family and friends die, and how they led him to believe that God is dead.

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie Wiesel reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forget man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Preface to the New Translation
by Elie Wiesel

IF IN MY LIFETIME I WAS TO WRITE only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past lingers in the present, all my writings after Night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear its stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works.

Why did I write it?

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?

Was it to leave behind a legacy of words, of memories, to help prevent history from repeating itself?

Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one’s knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About This Guide

The questions and discussion topics that follow are designed to enhance your reading of Elie Wiesel’s Night. We hope they will enrich your experience as you explore this poignant and fiercely honest remembrance of the Holocaust.


Introduction

A watershed memoir first published in 1958, Elie Wiesel’s Night has become widely recognized as a masterpiece. This new edition, translated from the French by Wiesel’s wife and frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, presents this seminal work in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. A new preface by the author, in addition to the text of his ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

Oprah Winfrey
I gain courage from his courage

The New York Times
A slim volume of terrifying power

About.com - Erin Collazo Miller
I am disturbed by the fact that Wiesel never returns to hope or faith. He raises big questions about humanity and suffering, but the book never points toward a meaningful answer. I want redemption, or at least some hint of light. But Wiesel did not experience light, and Night will not let the reader pretend the Holocaust was anything other than what it was.

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

Author Blurb Alfred Kazin
No one has left behind him so moving a record.

Reader Reviews

Linc

Wow!
This book is full of how some of the people of Holocaust survived including Eliezer, and is amazing! I want to let my kids read this!
Tychera Gooden

Very good
Raw, surprising and very heartfelt..
Cieran

Elie Wiesel
It was good. It talked about what happened to them, and it was sad.
kenzie ranger

The Jewish-American
The Jewish-American, Elie Wiesel, made the biggest impact on me when I read "Night". His tone in the book let me visualize the story setting by setting. I will never know what it felt like to go through what any of those people in the ...   Read More

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Night, try these:

  • Helga's Diary jacket

    Helga's Diary

    by Helga Weiss

    Published 2014

    About this book

    The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.

  • The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz jacket

    The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz

    by Denis Avey, Rob Broomby

    Published 2012

    About this book

    The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz is the extraordinary story of a British soldier who marched willingly into the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III, to testify at first hand the atrocities occurring in the camp.

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