My auntie brought me this book on Saturday, I didn't really plan on getting it cuz the Holocaust is all kinds of sad and morbid but it was actually uplifting too

It was a bit of a surprise when Oprah picked another memoir for her mighty book club selection, "Night" is the real deal, tragic and most definitely a required reading

Night is a "hell" of a ride, a whirlwind chronicled by young Elizer Wiesel on his time in concentration camp (Auschwitz) from his home to Poland to Germany at the tail end of WWII. I see it as a stop gap compared to other works on the Holocaust experience like Saving Private Ryan (war), The Pianist (escape) and Maus. In fact it's very similar to Maus but whereas Spiegelman used pictures to dehumanize his horrific experience, Wiesel gives us an unfiltered and ghastly vision from a child's perspective, he was 15 when "evacuated" from Sighet, Transylvania (today in Romania). There are moments of hope as he is able to stay miraculously with his father but essentially the prisoners revert back to a very primitive humanity (survival, the self) and it's so real it's demoralizing

The 115 pages will keep you awake for a couple of hours, its a brisk read and might almost qualify as a long short story. A story worth being told, worth being read

The work is bookended by a note to justify the new translation (2006) by Wiesel's wife Marion, an original forward by François Mauriac and the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech which is fierce with passion and endearment

Quotables
"The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion"
"[...] something in me rebelled against [...] death"

Vocab
appelplatz - place for roll call

The first transation of "Night" from Wiesel's Yiddish manuscript was in French (1958) as "La Nuit" by Les Editions de Minuit (France). It would make it "The Night" in English and it's more a linguistic issue but I wonder why "the" was dropped. Night as an entity, almost takes form as the camp prisoners have to battle it, day in, day out, especially in the last relentless march towards their salvation (or death)

Links
- reviews - Night
- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/books/16cnd-oprah.html?ex=1295067600...
- blog post 1/4/2006 - A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Posted	Monday, January 23, 2006 @ 5:41:37 PM (1032 days ago)
Tags	book
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