The Sonderberg Case [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Elie Wiesel (Author), Catherine Temerson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2010

From the Nobel laureate and author of the masterly Night, a deeply felt, beautifully written novel of morality, guilt, and innocence.

Despite personal success, Yedidyah—a theater critic in New York City, husband to a stage actress, father to two sons—finds himself increasingly drawn to the past. As he reflects on his life and the decisions he’s made, he longingly reminisces about the relationships he once had with the men in his family (his father, his uncle, his grandfather) and the questions that remain unanswered. It’s a feeling that is further complicated when Yedidyah is assigned to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate named Werner Sonderberg. Sonderberg returned alone from a walk in the Adirondacks with an elderly uncle, whose lifeless body was soon retrieved from the woods. His plea is enigmatic: “Guilty . . . and not guilty.”

These words strike a chord in Yedidyah, plunging him into feelings that bring him harrowingly close to madness. As Sonderberg’s trial moves along a path of dizzying yet revelatory twists and turns, Yedidyah begins to understand his own family’s hidden past and finally liberates himself from the shadow it has cast over his life.

With his signature elegance and thoughtfulness, Elie Wiesel has given us an enthralling psychological mystery, both vividly dramatic and profoundly emotional.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wiesel (Night) returns to the moral questions that characterize the post-WWII generation in this slim novel that is both overstuffed with plot and skimpy on motive. Yedidyah Wasserman, a well-regarded theater critic in New York City, is split between his parents' generation of Holocaust survivors and that of his sons, young American men who have chosen to move to Israel. Yedidyah imagines himself in the comfortable middle until he is called upon to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate. He is enthusiastic, but the trial is an unsettling opportunity for him to search the past and his family history, and also inexplicably angers his wife, Alika, a stage actress. The novel is told mostly via Yedidyah's personal reflections and each component of the story is so divorced from the next--there are no scenes, for instance, that show Yedidyah with more than one family member at a time--that it's difficult to assemble a larger view of his life. The ambitious scope of the story, spanning generations, is compelling, but limited by the novel's length.
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Review

“Elie Wiesel continues to be a voice of modern humanity’s conscience with his latest work, a beautifully layered book . . . [In The Sonderberg Case] the Nobel Laureate exploits his greatest strength: words beaming through the window that peers into the author’s soul.  For a brief moment of holy catharsis, we become Wiesel.”
            -Francis RTM Boyle, Time Out New York
 
“From the first clear, simple sentence, melancholy hangs over the story, always permeating the author’s voice . . . The theme of the Jew today confronting his own family history remains powerful.”
            -Booklist
 
“Wiesel’s latest novel is full of questions . . . Is Sonderberg guilty? The answer is satisfying if not surprising, a good description of this musing, almost fablelike work.”
            -Library Journal
 
“Ambitious . . . Compelling.”
            -Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Rep Tra edition (August 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307272206
• ISBN-13: 978-0307272201
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,013 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

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A short readable novel by a true master., September 28, 2010

By 

R. A. Frauenglas "Brooklyn Bum" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sonderberg Case (Hardcover)

This is Wiesel's first novel in awhile. I love his writing. This is a story within a story. It is a story of a man's life & a story of a criminal case the man covered as a theater critic. The case evolves from a simple case of murder to a case involving false identities & the Holocaust. The narrator also has an identity he can't remember, since he was a Jewish child who was sent away to be saved during the Holocaust. He remembers parents lost but forgotten. He remembers being unwanted by the family of the girl who saved him. He loves his Grandfather, who came from the family who adopted him. Who nurtured him & who loves him & where do his own wife & children fit into his life? Wiesel takes all these questions & molds them into this short & very readable novel.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An elegant almost poetic tale of two people with terrible pasts, April 12, 2011

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sonderberg Case (Hardcover)

Noble Prize Winning author Elie Wiesel is an elegant writer and novelist. His prose is poetic and a joy to read. His stories are interesting, moving, passionate, suspenseful. He is the author of over fifty books, novels, plays, volumes of conversations, and a cantata. His eloquence and thought-provoking language is seen in this tale posed within the novel: "The story of the two drops of water in the ocean that look for each other in vain and meet only when solitude and nostalgia turn them into tears."

This novel describes the effect that a trial has upon a man and how it causes him to rethink his own life, especially the questions about his past that he hasn't answered. He, Yedidyah, a failed actor turned drama critic, is assigned to cover the murder trial of Werner Sonderberg who allegedly murdered his uncle. He and his editor think of trials as dramas, plays. But is it a drama for the defendant, he asks his editor. You tell me, the editor replies. Although Wiesel does not reveal it, his name Yedidyah is ironic, for while he is tormented by his past, Yedidyah in Hebrew means "beloved by God."

The trial opens with a shock. Asked to plead, Werner Sonderberg states, "Guilty and not guilty." The case seems simple, and the prosecutor is passionately certain that Werner is guilty. Both Werner and the murdered man are Germans. The murdered man, who is elderly, introduces himself to Werner as his uncle. The two get along well, at first. Werner even ignores his fiancée frequently to be with him. The two men decide to go to the mountains for a week's rest. While there, they go off on the third day for a walk in the mountains. A maid later testifies that she heard the two men arguing before the walk. Werner returns from the walk alone, checks out of the hotel, and travels home. A day later, his uncle's body is found at the bottom of a cliff. The prosecutor insists that Werner pushed him to his death.

Yedidyah's report of the trial is woven into his ruminations about his as-of yet not fully disclosed life. It includes the tales of two women: a German non-Jewish heroine who is tormented into insanity by fellow German town people because of her heroism, and Yedidyah's wife, who he almost leads into despair because of his obsession with Werner's trial. Who is Werner, who is his uncle, and who is Yedidyah? What happened on the mountain top? Are the lives of Yedidyah and Werner comparable or are they mirror images? The result of the interweaving of tales is a tapestry of art, a montage of striking colors of many hues, tragic depictions of several lives.

Will Yedidyah and Werner ever find meaning in their lives, fulfillment, solace, love? Can they accept the last wisdom of Yedidyah's "grandfather": "Yes, my child, life is a beginning; but everything in life is a new beginning. As long as you're alive, you're immortal because you're open to the life of the living" to the warm presence of others, to the world, to joy?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, But Surprisingly Overwritten, April 22, 2011

By 

S. Balmuth "just a reader" (La Jolla, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sonderberg Case (Hardcover)

I hate to say anything against a person like Elie Wiesel, whom I infinitely respect, but I thought this book was just OK. It wasn't bad by any means and I'd still say it's worth reading, but it wasn't fabulously great either. The main premise is interesting: Yedidyah, a theatre critic living in New York, discovers he's not the person he thought he was; meanwhile a German citizen on trial in America pleads both guilty & not guilty to the murder of his uncle. The stories interlock and connect, giving us an interesting perspective in what at first glance seems like a black-and-white issue. The two premises are well-thought-out and make for a good parallel.

The book is a mere 178 pages, yet we don't get to either of these premises until perhaps 50 pages in. The first 50 pages are a somewhat rambling discussion of Yedidyah's life, the philosophies in which he finds comfort, and his relationship to his wife and children. I acknowledge that a book always requires exposition, but I feel that when the exposition takes up more than a quarter of the book, there's something wrong. While some of the information we learn about Yedidyah is interesting in its own right, we don't really need most of the back story. We just need to understand Yedidyah's relationship with his family (which can be laid out in only a few scenes), learn that he writes theatre reviews, and learn that he is chosen to write about the trial because the regular reporter is gone. That should take 10 or 20 pages at most. It doesn't need to take 50. Everything else, consequently, is crammed into only a few pages.

In spite of all that, the writing style is good and the scenes the author sets are always well-written. This is a short, intense book that can be devoured within a day or two. It's depressing, but you don't read it and lose faith in all humanity; it's about the Holocaust, but obliquely so. It's easy to read and gives a lot of food for thought, even if the story-telling itself could be better.