Twilight: A Novel [Paperback]

Elie Wiesel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 1995

Searching for the friend who saved him during the Holocaust, a man is compelled to question the very meaning of survival, in a story of memory, loss, and madness that reflects the history of the twentieth century. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Exploring the painful affinity between life and death, sanity and madness, Nobel Laureate Wiesel draws yet again on the experiences of the Holocaust to provide an answer. At the novel's center is Raphael Lipkin, a professor who, convinced he is going mad, seeks respite from his tortured imaginings in a mental clinic where he is both a temporary staff member, exploring the relationship between madness and prophecy, and a patient. Raphael's family has disappeared into the death camps, but although he speaks to them in his dreams, it is to his absent friend Pedro that he pours out his heart, for whom he searches among the madmen in the sanitarium. Guilt obsesses him, as it must all survivors, but the particularity of his guilt resides in Pedro, who gave his life or his sanity (which for Raphael are the same) in an effort to save Raphael's brother Yoel. Poignant though the recounted suffering must in fact have been, the canvas is too broad for any single player to kindle sympathy, the expression of emotion too overblown to bring tears. Torture, death, the violence of separation are recounted in cliche-ridden prose. Yet a lingering question manages to possess the reader: Is every survivor already half dead?
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

$18.95. f Raphael Lipkin, a professor of mystical traditions and a Holocaust survivor, comes to the Mountain Clinic to study the relationship between madness and prophecy. He is seeking among these madmen, who believe they are Cain, Abraham, Joseph, the Messiah, some fragmentary truth, some fleeting epiphany. Why did he survive? "And what about God in all this?" In this brilliant and powerful interweaving of past and present, dream and vision, fantasy and reality, Wiesel has synthesized his earlierand ever continuingconcerns, journeying from the Holocaust world of his Night and Dawn to the twilight realm of madness, mysticism, and prophecy. Marion Wiesel's translation is perfectly attuned to her husband's absorbing style. Highly recommended. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (November 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080521058X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805210583
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #840,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Twilight of Madness, July 23, 2004

By 

R. Chaffey "beckahi" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Twilight (Paperback)

Elie Wiesel is a man apparently haunted by his past. A survivor of the concentration camps and the Holocaust, Wiesel has turned his experiences into some of the most profound modern literature. "Twilight" is no exception to that rule, a novel that searches for the truth of humanity lost during the Holocaust.

"Twilight" tells the story of Raphael Lipkin, a lost and lonely man. He finds himself drawn to a sanitorium in upstate New York, which specializes in the madness of patients who believe themselves to be characters from the Bible. He is there to hopefully his friend Pedro, the man who saved him during the Holocaust and then disappeared from his life. As he studies these patients, who range from Abraham and Cain to Jesus and God himself, Raphael is torn between madness and sanity. He questions all that he knows to be true and all that he has experienced in his life.

Wiesel is a master storyteller, weaving complicated stories into a wonderous picture. "Twilight" fluctuates between the present time, to Raphael's memories, to his family's persecution during the Holocaust. The reader is shown the true horrors that Jews experienced, and how families are torn apart. Raphael never recovers from his experiences, and this becomes apparent in his questioning. His search doesn't necessarily bring answers; these are tough questions that might not be answerable. How can one see through the madness of the Holocaust when it is an event that the entire world still struggles to understand? Wiesel's purpose isn't to make one understand these tragedies or to give simple answers to questions of faith; rather, he wants the reader to think and question, and be content to know that not everything is for us to know.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as Perplexing as kex86 found it!, December 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Twilight: A Novel (Paperback)

This was my 1st Wiesel work and I did not find it to be "perplexing" or "weird". Actually, I found it to be a quite sane story depicting one of the 20th centuries' most perplexing events.

For readers who have thought previously about the various shades of madness and those who find themselves afflicted (Robert Persig's 'Lila' as an example) and for readers who have spent any time reflecting on the inexcapable impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their next generation...then 'Twilight' is a mystical and brutally real novel depicting the terror of just one family out of the countless thousands.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In search of the Savior, January 3, 2002

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Twilight (Hardcover)

This was a difficult book to rate. It is, to begin with, a fairly short novel; just over 200 pages. I felt one of the problems with this book was that the author moved us around too much in time, place and character. The brevity of the book made this confusing. We're one place then another before we got settled in with the former. The basic plot of the book is challenging but worth the effort to try and follow. A doctor (Raphael)who was a youthful survivor of the Holocaust is trying to come to understand his experiences. Through him we meet a wide array of characters of whom the most important is a man nicknamed Pedro. Raphael is in a search for Pedro and for meaning to the horrors that are beyond meaning. There is an irony in the duality of his search. On one level Raphael searches for a real savior that he has lost. On the other level, he searches for the savior that was never there. In the end he encounters both. We are left unfulfilled. Having gone this far with him, we expect more. We want a clear answer, a happy ending. We get neither and, in this ambiguity, we get a sense of Holocaust reality; there is no meaning, there is no happy ending. Night represents evil, day represents good. In the twilight lies the madness.