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| Dawn | 
 enlarge | Author: Elie Wiesel
Creator: Frances Frenaye
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Category: Book
List Price: $9.00
Buy New: $3.67
You Save: $5.33 (59%)
New (38) Used (17) Collectible (2) from $0.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 31660
Media: Paperback
Edition: Tra
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 96
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.3
ISBN: 0809037726
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.914
EAN: 9780809037728
ASIN: 0809037726
Publication Date: March 21, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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Product Description
“The author…has built knowledge into artistic fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review
Elisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel’s ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative. Caught between the manifold horrors of the past and the troubling dilemmas of the present, Elisha wrestles with guilt, ghosts, and ultimately God as he waits for the appointed hour and his act of assassination. Dawn is an eloquent meditation on the compromises, justifications, and sacrifices that human beings make when they murder other human beings.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Not Wiesel's best work July 12, 2006
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Dawn, by Elie Wiesel, is an interesting character study, but not much else. The story revolves around a young Jewish man, a survivor of the Holocaust, which is only a year or so in his past, who is working as a Zionist terrorist in pre-Israel Palestine. He is new to the work, and as an initiation, of sorts, his job on the night the novel takes place is to execute a British officer being held in the basement of his building.
The entire novel takes place in one night (ending at dawn, the pivotal "moment of truth" in the novel), and in one room. The protagonist slips in and out of flashback, revealing his own dark past and the hold it has taken on him. He imagines all the people he has ever known sharing the room with him, waiting to see if he will murder the Englishman in the basement.
Wiesel's point is that we are the sum total of everything that has ever happened to us and everyone who has ever loved us or given us their time. An interesting point, to be sure. But the hallucinatory ghosts the narrator sees around him is a device that wears thin very quickly. The middle third of this very, very short novel seems like extra padding.
The book's brevity is probably its greatest asset. I read it in an afternoon, and I am a slow reader. Wiesel writes in a very spare style, with few unnecessary words, except for that middle part of the book, which was poorly paced and redundant.
Dawn is an interesting read, and a good book, but it is certainly not on par with Wiesel's other work. If you only read one of his books, read Night, which has the most meaningful things to say, and if you're still curious, you can pick up Dawn and decide for yourself.
Recommended.
Best of Trilogy October 9, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dawn is my favorite book in Elie Wiesel's trilogy (Night, Dawn, The Accident). I believe it has the most literary value-it put me in someone else's head.
In just one word? Terrorism March 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A survivor of this becomes a proponent for that. . .by any means necessary. Unfortunately, Ellie Wiesel's fictional "Dawn" is all too true; all too often repeated.
Terrorized as a Jew by Nazis in World War II, Elisha now terrorizes as a Jew for a free Palestine.
Swap out the name of the Holocast survived and the name of the cause proposed and you have the skeleton of all political or religious terrorism. The terrorists will always be with us. . .they usually will win. . .the body count will certainly rise. It will always be the season of terror.
 Excellent thinking book & totally different from Night April 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First off, this is not Night 2. I naively expected that when publisher's try to frame them as part of a 'trilogy'. Night is absolutely and without bar one of the most fantastic books I have read in my life.
This is not just another chapter of that. And it is not a sequel. It is an incredibly profound, and beautifully written meditation on the journey of many Holocaust survivors -- but not his. This is a work of complete fiction. Many survivors went to Palestine, and fought the British (not the Arabs) to kick them out and thus be able to establish a free Jewish state.
It is the story of a fictional Elishah (who has remarkably similar childhood and Holocaust experiences to those of Wiesel) who becomes one of these freedom fighters, and is ordered to execute a British officer in retaliation for their hanging one of the rebels. It is an account of the night that Elishah passes, knowing he has to become a murderer in the morning, and all of his internal struggles with that. In a particularly powerful lead up to the end, he realizes the power of hatred, how without hatred, terrorist groups like theirs, and indeed any violence against others is almost impossible. He notes how nations are so adept at teaching their people to hate, and even comes to the point of trying to make himself hate this stranger in order to be able to follow his orders.
EXTREMELY powerful and evocative.
One word of caution -- there is almost no action here. This is a thinking book. If you are not up to the mental effort to think and feel along with him, you will not like it.
Confusion July 30, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book had a very slow start but as you read into it more, it got better. I did not have a very strong liking for this book because of the mindset the main character was in. He seemed to be going insane with his own thoughts and haunts of his past after he joined the Freedom Movement. Also the slow start to this book didn't have anything to catch my eye and reel me in. For people that like real life drama's and books that make you feel like your apart of the story, this is a good book for them.
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