The Wall (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Hersey
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Plot: Holocaust novel in diary form
- Time of Work: November, 1939, to May, 1943
- Setting: Warsaw, primarily in the ghetto sector
- Principal Characters: Noach Levinson, Dolek Berson, Rachel Apt, Halinka Mazur, Stefan Mazur, Henryk Rapaport, Hil Zilberzweig, Lazar Slonim, Fischel Schpunt, Benlevi
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Revolutions, 1940’s, World War II, 1930’s, Jews or Jewish life, Historians, Nazism or Nazis, Holocaust, Jewish, Poland or Polish people
- Locales: Warsaw, Poland, Poland
The Novel
John Hersey’s intent in writing The Wall is to relate the martyrdom of the Jews who lived in Warsaw during World War II in fictional form, and the text of the novel is purported to consist of selections from a very extensive diary originally written in Yiddish that was kept by a historian named Noach Levinson. Even though the diary and the historian are equally fictive, the novel reads very much like an authentic historical chronicle. As published under the title of The Wall, the diary begins with the German occupation of the Polish capital in the fall...
[The entire page is 2567 words long]
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