The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Written between 1955 and 1960, these three narratives were created separately..." (more)
Key Phrases: John Dawson, David ben Moshe, Paul Russel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record."--Alfred Kazin

"Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art."--Curt Leviant, Saturday Review
-- Review

Review

"To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record."--Alfred Kazin"Wiesel has taken his own anguish and imaginatively metamorphosed it into art."--Curt Leviant, Saturday Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 318 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang (September 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374521409
• ISBN-13: 978-0374521400
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #423,190 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional, Eloquent, And Largely Without Hope, August 16, 2000

By	Skylar H. Burris (United States) - See all my reviews

This collection consists of a biography and two novels by Elie Wiesel, who survived the horror of the concentration camps in World War II.

Dawn:

Dawn is perhaps the most thought-provoking and reflective of all of Elie Wiesel's novels. It is a beautifully written but disturbing novel about an Israeli terrorist waiting to assassinate a British officer in retaliation for the hanging of an Israeli. This novel inspires a great deal of thought about stopping violence with violence and hate with hate. When the nation of Israel was established after World War II, for the first time in centuries, the Jews were not trying to appease their opressors, but they were fighting back, and fighting effectively. Reflecting on the persecution the Jews have suffered, the young assassin Elisha says: "Now our only chance lies in hating you, in learning the necessity of the art of hate." However, Elisha cannot make himself hate his enemey, as much as he desires to. The novel ultimately suggests that hatred is not the answer, that it must be fought, or man will be lost. Wiesel asks the poignant question, "Where is God to be found? In suffering or rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses?"

Night:

Night is a powerful, beautifully written autobiography of a concentration camp survivor. Elie Wiesel deals with his loss of faith during the holocaust, and relives the horrors of the concentration camp. Perhaps most importantly, he shows how such a life affected the people in the camps--how it changed many of them into something less than human. The question of injustice is indeed an unsettling one, but Wiesle's loss of faith--and the seeming impossibility (at the end of the book) of his ever regaining it--is deeply saddening.

The Accident:

Wiesel's writing style makes this novel, a mixture of biography and fiction, interesting to read. The story itself, however, is often obscure and stubbornly depressing. The narrator of the novel refuses to admit any happiness to his life, even when it is quite possible to do so. The Accident is the most consistently pessimistic of Wiesel's three novels, and the least thought-provoking, but still well worth reading.

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Trilogy, February 1, 2004

By	Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its' parts. Although all three books are very good to excellent, the way they fit together creates an excellent story from beginning to end. We start with "Night" which creates the understanding of the Holocaust through the perceptive eyes and ears of the youthful story teller. We then move to the book "Dawn" in which we find the main character as a young man who is involved in a moral dilemna. How he resolves the dilemna makes him realize that there is evil in all of us. His attempt to rationalize his actions are not sufficient to redeem himself in his own mind. We finish up with "The Accident" where we find the main character as a middle-aged man whose anger at the world makes him incapable of love. Certainly all that has preceded in his life helps us to understand his feelings but his anger is uncompromising and a dead end in and of itself. The problem resolves itself in a solution that brings an impressive closure to essentially all three books.

As a matter of clarification, each novel is a seperate story in itself. There is no "common Character" to all the novels. However, we get a sense that this all happens to one person. This is how well these stories fit together. Essentially, these works would appear to be autobiographical which adds to their meaning. Although Wiesel writes extensively about the Holocaust, there is certainly a special common thread to these stories. Read all three and make sure you read them in their proper order. Despite their brevity, it is as good an overall explantion, evaluation and summation of the Holocaust as you will find.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Metaphors of Horror, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

Wiesel commands the heart and soul of his readers in The Night Trilogy. There are a certain number of books that reach a person at the most elemental level and show them light and also unforgettable darkness. The Night Trilogy does this without pretense, without effort and without excuse.

Many people have read Wiesel's account of Auschwitz and Buchenwald through his short novel, Night. If anyone is going to read Holocaust literature they should not limit themselves to a concise focus on the camps, but also what happens to the survivors after the events.

When you combine Night, Dawn, and The Accident together, you as the reader can assemble a true and purer understanding of what Holocaust survivors went through and more importantly what they continue to go through.

The collection is a must read for anyone who considers themselves socially aware. The Night Trilogy is a work that you will go back to time and again. Readers will lend this out to friends not simply to be nice, but because they will feel a yearning for all those in their lives to know what happened and is still happening to Holocaust survivors.

Read this collection until your heart bleeds and pass it on to a friend so that compassion and understanding will bloom.