Synopses & Reviews
Light is in us even if we have no eyes,” wrote Jacques Lusseyran, a French underground resistance leader during WW II, in this classic memoir of his first twenty years. Lusseyran maintained his deep love of life through the infirmity of blindness, the terrors of war, and the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp.
When the author was eight years old, he lost his sight in an accident and finished lycée and college by means of braille. In the months after his accident, Lusseyran made astounding discoveries about his rainbow hued universe within” and the need to participate in the world outside.
A normal boy, he enjoyed school, had running mates for his wanderings throughout the countryside, and became aware of the opposite sex. With friends like the faithful Jean, he was learning the cure” for blindness: to immerse oneself again and without delay in a life that is as real and as difficult as the lives of others.”
The opportunity to show leadership came with the Nazi invasion of France. Gradually, he became determined to lead his classmates into resistance and this small circle of friends widened cell by cell, eventually reaching six hundred members before merging with the larger Defense de la France. In one fascinating scene, he describes interviewing prospective underground recruits, seeing” them by means of their voices and in this way weeding out the weak and the traitorous. As one of the leaders of Defense de la France, Lusseyran helped to publish a clandestine newspaper that eventually kept 250,000 French citizens informed during the occupation.
In July 1943, Jacques and his comrades were betrayed to the Germans and interrogated by the Gestapo. After a fifteen-month incarceration in Buchenwald the author was one of thirty prisoners to survive from an original shipment of two thousand French Resistance fighters.
Lusseyrans remarkable memoir not only tells the gripping story of his years as a hero of the French Resistance and of the incredibly thin margin by which he survived Buchenwald, it is also one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
Review
"A magical book, the kind that becomes a classic, passed along between friends. . . . How do you explain the incredible suspense of this book? You know he lives. . . . So why is your breath caught in your throat and why can't you put this book down even the second or third time through it?"
The Baltimore Sun"And There Was Light is the little-known but thoroughly luminous autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, a blind man who discovered the gift of inner sight after losing his vision in a childhood accident and then put his gift to use in the struggle against Nazism. Lusseyran allows us to glimpse both heaven and hell on Earth through the eyes of a man who has lived through both. His description of what it is like to 'see' as a blind man is fascinating and inspiring; his account of Buchenwald, where he was condemned to the living hell of the 'Invalids' Barracks,' is one of the most anguishing fragments of Holocaust testimony that I have ever encountered." Jonathan Kirsch, the Los Angeles Times
"Blindness and Buchenwald became gateways. This book is his testament to the joy which exists in all of us, a joy which no conditions not even the worst can kill." Roshi Phillip Kapleau
Review
A magical book, the kind that becomes a classic.”
Baltimore Sun
One of the most powerful memoirs Ive ever encountered...[Lusseyrans] experience is thrilling, horrible, honest, spiritually profound, and utterly full of joy.”
Ethan Hawke, in the Village Voice
One of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. It is why books are published at all.”
Mark Nepo, author of Seven Thousand Ways to Listen
Lusseyran writes like an angel, like a mystic. His response to losing his sight at an early age is so surprising that it will change the way anyone thinks about blindness.”
Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark
Lusseyran allows us to glimpse both heaven and hell on Earth through the eyes of a man who has lived through both. His description of what it is like to see as a blind man is fascinating and inspiring; his account of Buchenwald, where he was condemned to the living hell of the Invalids Barracks, is one of the most anguishing fragments of Holocaust testimony that I have ever encountered.”
Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
A stunning revelation of human courage and love arising in the midst of implacable human evil. Under it all runs a deep current of mystical truth and hope.”
Jacob Needleman, author of An Unknown World
An exciting, inspirational account of a life without sight.”
Library Journal
What normally would seem a tragic plunge into darkness becomes a thrilling journey into light.”
Peter Brook, director of the International Centre for Theatre Research, Paris
This book is his testament to the joy which exists in all of us, a joy which no conditions not even the worst can kill.”
Roshi Philip Kapleau, author of The Three Pillars of Zen
Synopsis
The book that helped inspire Anthony Doerr s All the Light We Cannot See
An updated edition of this classic World War II memoir, chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century, with a new photo insert and restored passages from the original French edition
When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
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Synopsis
In our day of access to everything there are still wonders to be discovered. When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling and was determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Merging with the larger Defense de la France, he helped publish an underground newspaper that served the occupied and survives today as France Soir. Eventually, Lusseyran and other DF members were arrested and imprisoned in Buchenwald. He was one of 30 to survive a transport of 2,000 Resistance fighters to the concentration camp.
Synopsis
An updated edition of this classic World War II memoir, chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century, with a new photo insert and restored passages from the original French editionWhen Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
About the Author
Jacques Lusseyran (September 19, 1924 July 27, 1971) was a blind French author and French Resistance leader. Born in Paris, he became totally blind in a school accident at the age of eight. He soon learned to adapt to being blind and maintained many close friendships. At a young age he became alarmed at the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and decided to learn German so that he could listen to radio broadcasts and follow the rise of the Nazis. Less than a year after the German invasion of France, in the spring of 1941, at the age of seventeen, Lusseyran formed a resistance group called the Volunteers of Liberty with fifty-two other boys. Because of his ability to read people as a blind person, he was put in charge of recruitment and the group grew to over six hundred young men. The group later merged with another resistance group called Défense de la France, which published an underground newspaper that eventually achieved a circulation of 250,000.
After the war, it became one of France's most respected newspapers, France Soir. Lusseyran was arrested, along with the other leaders of the DF and spent fifteen months in the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp. Lusseyran was one of the thirty survivors of the two thousand French citizens who were imprisoned in Buchenwald. After the war, Lusseyran became a university professor in the U.S. and died in a car accident in France in 1971.
Table of Contents
1. Clear Water of Childhood
2. Revelation of Light
3. The Cure for Blindness
4. Running Mates and Teachers
5. My Friend Jean
6. The Visual Bind
7. The Troubled Earth
8. My Country, My War
9. The Faceless Disaster
10. The Plunge into Courage
11. The Brotherhood of Resistance
12. Our Own Defense of France
13. Betrayal and Arrest
14. The Road to Buchenwald
15. The Living and the Dead
16. My New World
Epilogue
Addendum