Night; Dawn; Day (B'Nai B'Rith Judaica Library) [Hardcover]

Elie Wiesel (Author), Stella Rodway (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1985 | ISBN-10: 0876688970 | ISBN-13: 978-0876688977

Elie Wiesel, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, brings together his first three books in this one volume.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French

Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: Jason Aronson (October 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876688970
• ISBN-13: 978-0876688977
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,228,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books, including his unforgettable international best sellers Night and A Beggar in Jerusalem, winner of the Prix Médicis. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor with the rank of Grand Cross. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fire! The Furnace! Look, over there!, May 31, 2000

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richard_t "richard_t" (Overseas) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Night; Dawn; Day (B'Nai B'Rith Judaica Library) (Hardcover)

The cries of a madwoman on an Auschwitz-bound cattle car are just one of many portents shepherding doomed souls on their way to Nazi furnaces. In "Night", the first of three books in this collection, Elie Wiesel recounts his deportation to the death camps where the rest of his family perished. The tragic weight of his witness to this obscene cruelty burdens the reader with the fates of the inmates and his reflections on the meaning of evil. Wiesel questions his god and his faith. He sees sons kill fathers: "Meir. Meir, my boy! Don't you recognize me? I'm your father... you're hurting me... you're killing your father! I've got some bread... for you too... for you too..." (p.106), and becomes intimate with death.

In "Dawn", Wiesel has migrated to Palestine and faces the duty to execute a captured prisoner. His long night of contemplation and uncertainty exposes his preoccupation with killing and killers and again with death: "Death," Kalman, the grizzled master, told me, "is a being without arms or legs or mouth or head; it is all eyes. If ever you meet a creature with eyes everywhere, you can be sure that it is death." (p.140). It is a preoccupation to be squeezed only from one who has not fully lost his faith or his humanity. A beggar explains the face of the night: "Listen," he said, digging his fingers into my arm. "I'm going to teach you the art of distinguishing between day and night. Always look at a window, and failing that look into the eyes of a man. If you see a face, any face, then you can be sure that night has succeeded day. For, believe me, night has a face." (p.126) Fear, night, suffering, and evil are his companions, and he explores them constantly. "Being afraid is nothing. Fear is only a color, a backdrop, a landscape." (p.174).

Until, in "Day", he survives a terrible accident and is faced with his own complacent acceptance of mortality. He struggles with the urge to explain to his talented young doctor the futility of fighting against death, and reaches an epiphany when he understands the tragedy of splashing others with his suffering. "Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul - and worse, the souls of your friends - for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep." (p.247).

These stories are powerful and frightening,. Death is an implacable enemy, but also a partner for life who never goes away and will always win in the end. Wiesel has stared at evil, his stories are wrenching.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Night/Dawn/Day, April 10, 2006

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M. Hudgens "mhleigh" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night; Dawn; Day (B'Nai B'Rith Judaica Library) (Hardcover)

This was one bound volume of Wiesel's first three books, which concern the Holocaust, survival, and humanity. Night is Wiesel's personal memoir, which relates his personal story before and during World War II, as he and his father are separated from his mother and sister and interned in a series of concentration camps. Dawn is the story of a member of the movement to free Palestine from British occupation and Day concerns how one could move from a past that consumes one's every thought (or even if one should).

Quote: "Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

I read Night in high school, and always think of it as being a particularly long book, which it is not. Wiesel manages to pack more than I would think possible into a little over a hundred pages, which relates the story of himself and his family during the Holocaust. It is a beautifully written work that relates a terrible story. I found the story of Wiesel's loss of faith and the relationship he had with his father particularly memorable. If you somehow missed this in high school, pick it up, if you didn't, find it again. It's worth it. Dawn and Day are not as catching as the first work, but are still interesting in their own way.

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful coping tool, January 15, 2008

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D. Anthony (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Night; Dawn; Day (B'Nai B'Rith Judaica Library) (Hardcover)

I read this book when going through a particularly difficult loss. While I share very little in common with the author, I found all three stories to be profound and touching. While I cannot be thankful for the suffering and tragedy that Elie Wiesel experienced, I will always appreciate that he wrote about it.