Synopses & Reviews
When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory."
This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem.
Synopsis
Elie Wiesel's best-selling tale of the beggars and madmen, survivors and fighters, victors and victims who congregate at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in the days following the Six-Day War brilliantly weaves together myth and mystery, parable and paradox.
"Perhaps the first major novel to bring to bear on the destiny of the Jew all the resources of modem European literary experience combined with the storytelling techniques of the Chassidic masters". -- Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Elie Wiesel is the author of more than fifty books, both fiction and nonfiction. He is a recipient of the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honor’s Grand-Croix, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1976, he has been the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.