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La Nuit

La Nuit

By&
Narrative non-fictionBiography & MemoirClassics
Pages
120
Published
1956
Language
English

Synopsis

Night is Elie Wiesel's memoir of his year in the Nazi camps. In 1944 the Jews of Sighet, his town in Transylvania, are ghettoised and deported; Wiesel, then a teenager, is sent with his family to Auschwitz, and from there to the Buna works and on to Buchenwald.

He first set the account down in Yiddish, published in Buenos Aires in 1956 as the much longer "Un di velt hot geshvign" ("And the World Remained Silent"), then condensed and reworked it himself into the spare French text "La Nuit", published in 1958 by Les Éditions de Minuit with a foreword by François Mauriac. That French version is the basis of the English translations read today, including Marion Wiesel's of 2006. Short and unadorned, it is less a catalogue of atrocity than a record of what the camps did to a devout boy's faith, and it has become one of the central texts of Holocaust literature.

Prose complexity
10/10

Vibe

SadEmotionalDarkReflectiveThought-ProvokingPhilosophicalInspiring
SurvivalComing of Age

Genres

Biography & Memoir Classics Historical Fiction History Philosophy & Religion Memoir Biography Judaism Philosophy

About the author

E
Elie Wiesel

Eliezer Wiesel is a Romania-born American novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor of Hungarian Jewish descent. He is the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. On November 30, 2006 Wiesel received an honorary knighthood in London, England in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education...

Frequently asked questions

  • Is the narrator, Eliezer, the same person as the author, Elie Wiesel?

    Yes. Night is a memoir, and its narrator Eliezer is a lightly fictionalized version of Wiesel himself — he changed a few small details (for example, which foot he wounded) but the events Eliezer lives through in the book are Wiesel's own experience of deportation to Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a teenager.

  • Was Night originally written in French?

    No. Wiesel first wrote his account in Yiddish, published in Buenos Aires in 1956 as the much longer "Un di velt hot geshvign" ("And the World Remained Silent"). He then heavily condensed and reworked it himself into the shorter French text "La Nuit," published in 1958 by Les Éditions de Minuit — this French version is the basis for the "Night" translations most readers know today.

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