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| Night (Oprah's Book Club) | 
 enlarge | Author: Elie Wiesel
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Category: Book
List Price: $9.00
Buy Used: $0.92
You Save: $8.08 (90%)
New (155) Used (406) Collectible (10) from $0.92
Avg. Customer Rating:  630 reviews
Sales Rank: 770
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 120
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 0374500010
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318092
EAN: 9780374500016
ASIN: 0374500010
Publication Date: January 16, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Book for the Decades.... January 18, 2006
25 out of 28 found this review helpful
Elie Wiesel's Night is truly a book for the decades. The emotional impact that this book creates can be overwhelming at times since you realize that Wiesel lived through one of the worst nightmares ever to grace the Earth. Somewhere deep inside us, there is a reservoir of determination, hope, and will that won't let us quit, no matter how horrendous the things around us. Few of us ever find it, but Wiesel did. He survived, and if his words can help one or two out there to survive trauma and darkness, then we can never thank him enough.
I first read this book 14 years ago in high school and I cried when I finished. This book is that impactful. Brilliant choice.
 Why remember? January 23, 2006
24 out of 51 found this review helpful
Elie Wiesel wrote a harrowing novel about the experience of ultimate evil. It is a recommended book because we assume that remembering the evil of the past makes us better human beings. But does it?
Wiesel himself is unfortunately the proof that it doesn't. He has turned the memory of the holocaust into kitsch in the service of excusing evil; he has made the Jewish holocaust into a yardstick that denies the seriousness of other sufferings. Wiesel, for example, refused to comment on the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.
Adam Schatz commented this month in the LA times on how Wiesel uses his moral authority for the worse:
For example, Wiesel does not believe that Gypsies and gays should be remembered alongside Jewish victims of the Holocaust, although hundreds of thousands of them perished. He has frowned upon the use of the term "genocide" in reference to the Armenian holocaust.
...he has long maintained that the 1948 Palestinian refugees left voluntarily, "incited by their leaders," a claim that Israel's own historians have done much to shatter.
In the face of abundant evidence from human rights groups that Israel has committed widespread human rights violations in the occupied territories, Wiesel has either denied such reports or loftily asserted that, as a Jew who does not live in Israel, he has no right to air his criticisms...
So go read Wiesel, but don't forget to ask yourself. What is the point of remembrance? When does memory become kitsch? When does sheding tears over some horrors become an exercise in denying other horrors? When does asserting one's pain become a way of forgetting the pain of others?
Brutality of Apathy Revealed in Relentless Detail and Still Sadly Resonant Far Beyond the Holocaust January 18, 2006
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
In a world that often feels like it is teetering toward relenting madness, Elie Wiesel's vividly haunting 1960 memoir still reminds us that there was a precedent for the deranged mindset that justifies acts of terrorism. In a concise, unadorned manner, he relives the spiraling insanity that surrounded the Jewish population of Sighet, Transylvania, as insulated a world as one could imagine and certainly a community who understandably could not embrace the insanity of the extermination occurring around them. Inevitably, they are taken to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, two of the most infamous concentration camps, where Wiesel provides painfully palpable detail of the day-to-day living conditions. He not only records the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazi guards toward the Jews, as other have, but more tellingly, describes the inhumanity of the camp inmates toward each other for the sake of survival.
It's a stark peek into the nature of evil that is at once uncomfortable to acknowledge and invaluable to read and absorb. The propagation of evil from forces unexpected is what makes Wiesel's book resonate today. As we consider the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Dili and Liquica Church massacres in East Timor, the 1994 Rwandan genocide (dramatized in the superb film, 2004's "Hotel Rwanda"), or most pertinently, the detention camps that exist today in North Korea, it is obvious that the Third Reich did not have a monopoly on justifying such slaughter. With his two older sisters, Wiesel was able to survive the camps and share his devastating story with future generations. Compressed from a much larger memoir Wiesel wrote in Yiddish, the book represents a powerfully affecting treatment that edits the key moments of his existence to their essence. The result is elliptical and startling. Like Art Spiegelman's "Maus" series, William Styron's "Sophie's Choice", Thomas Keneally's "Schindler's List" and of course, the most heartbreaking, Anne Frank's diary, Wiesel's work lends yet another piercing look into the unanticipated breaches of the human soul during one of history's most dire times. Strongly recommended.
 Restricted humanity January 31, 2006
21 out of 56 found this review helpful
Mr. Wiesel's bravery is legendary; he deserves plaudits for that. However, much is ignored in the sanctifying of this man. Among the most indicting elements involving him is his aversion to homosexuals and gypsies, both groups of which were in concentration camps with him and the many others brutally encamped. How is it that this celebrated man can deny a place of remembrance for those groups while propounding keeping the memory alive--rightly so--for others so brutalized? Should we remember only the outrages against Jews but not the equal ones of homosexuals and gypsies? Does Mr. Wiesel consider them lesser? That this book has been chosen by Ms. Oprah for circulation is, therefore, somewhat surprising. Is she aware of this glaring bigotry on Mr. Wiesel's part? Bravo to Mr. Wiesel for his courage. Shame on Mr. Wiesel for his restrictive humanity.
Beautifully written novel January 26, 2006
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
I just finished reading this book in one sitting, and I must say that I absolutely loved it. I was expecting for a tearjerker, and although I didn't exactly shed any tears, it was good all the same. I was truly moved by this well written novel and was able to connect emotionally with the main character Eliezer. Through this novel, Elie Wiesel greatly depicted the ideas of discrimination, god, silence, and brutality amongst men with great intensity. When the author killed someone off, I felt as if I were standing right at the sight watching the exact scene happen right before my eyes; when the characters were drowning in their tears, I felt my own heart break into pieces along with them. I could go on forever, but I don't want to waste anyone's time. If you're still reading this review and haven't read the novel yet, take my advice and read it. It's a rather short novel, but fulfilling all the same. Enjoy.
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