Fic­tion

The Night Tril­o­gy: Night, Dawn, Day

Elie Wiesel
  • From the Publisher
July 14, 2016

Night is one of the mas­ter­pieces of Holo­caust lit­er­a­ture. First pub­lished in 1958, it is the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal account of an ado­les­cent boy and his father in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel writes of their bat­tle for sur­vival and of his bat­tle with God for a way to under­stand the wan­ton cru­el­ty he wit­ness­es each day. In the short nov­el Dawn (1960), a young man who has sur­vived World War II and set­tled in Pales­tine joins a Jew­ish under­ground move­ment and is com­mand­ed to exe­cute a British offi­cer who has been tak­en hostage. In Day (pre­vi­ous­ly titled The Acci­dent, 1961), Wiesel ques­tions the lim­its of con­science: Can Holo­caust sur­vivors forge a new life despite their mem­o­ries? Wiesel’s tril­o­gy offers insights on mankind’s attrac­tion to vio­lence and on the temp­ta­tion of self-destruction.

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