What Do I Read Next?
- Night marks the beginning of Wiesel's body of work and is the first in a trilogy. The subsequent books, L'aube (Dawn, 1961) and Le Jour (The Accident, 1961), focus on Holocaust survivors and their struggles with the memories of the camps.
- In his 1962 book, The Town Beyond the Wall, Wiesel tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who returns to Hungary to confront his Nazi tormentors. Instead of finding peace, he realizes that revenge only undermines and displaces moral responsibility. There is no solace in vengeance.
- The widely beloved story of Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl (1947), narrates the experiences of a group of Jews enduring the immense stress of hiding from the Nazis, only to be eventually discovered. The diary has been masterfully adapted for both stage and film and remains a cherished memento of the Holocaust.
- While not centered on the Holocaust, Saul Bellow's works from the same era as Wiesel's Night offer a different perspective. Published in 1956, Seize the Day explores the father-son relationship in a manner distinct from Wiesel's approach, yet both can be interpreted through the lens of the Abraham/Isaac motif. Despite their contrasts, the protagonists in both stories are burdened by the weight of their responsibilities to their fathers.
- Although some may find it challenging to accept the Holocaust being depicted in a graphic novel, Art Spiegelman's Maus (1980-1991) is a remarkable summary of the Holocaust. Featuring cats as Nazis, mice as Jews, and pigs as Poles, the novel reveals more about the complexities of moral chaos than any single person's recollection of the nightmare could.
- Gerda Weissmann Klein's 1995 novel, All but My Life, recounts her experiences during World War II. The story begins in prewar Poland and follows her three-year ordeal in German labor camps. The narrative concludes on a hopeful note as she marries the American lieutenant who helps liberate the camp. Unlike many other Holocaust stories, Klein's book focuses more on emotions than on the ethics of the horrors she endured.
- During the same period when Jews in Europe were being rounded up and deported, Japanese citizens in the United States and Canada were also imprisoned. Joy Kogawa's 1981 novel, Obasan, tells the story of how the irrational fear of Japanese invasion led to the exile of Canadian citizens of Japanese descent. They were forced into camps in the interior and were not allowed to resume full citizenship until the early 1950s.
- Elie Wiesel's contemporary, Allen Ginsberg, was a poet and beatnik whose work often reflected on human suffering, including the sufferings of his own people in the camps. In the late 1950s, he compiled a collection titled Kaddish and Other Poems. The poem "Kaddish" itself is a personal rendition of the Jewish mourning hymn, written for his mother who passed away in 1956.
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