Kirkus Star
THE KIRKUS STAR
Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit

BROWSE BOOK REVIEWS




Elie Wiesel


Showing

Cover art for DAWN
FICTION
Released: April 1, 1961
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Frances Frenaye

"Perhaps not a popular form- or theme, but it leaves an inevitable impress."
A spare, spectral short novel follows last year's Night and fills in the hours before dawn spent by Elisha, 18, designated to kill an Englishman- in Palestine- at the time when reprisals were ordered: for the hanging of every Jewish fighter, there was to be the execution of an Englishman. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL
FICTION
Released: May 20, 1964

"The sufferings of the Jews (or of humanity) are introverted here into a picture something like the back-view of one of hagall's tortured prophets."
The victim is saying his Prayers — Prayers directed towards a God he has never really found in all his obsessive fanatic searches for Him. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE GATES OF THE FOREST
FICTION
Released: May 26, 1966

"It has all been said before but Mr. Wiesel puts it down as well as anyone."
Translated from the French by Francis Frenaye, this is a novel about the face of the Jewish people and the challenge to the face of one Jew—a Hungarian called Gregor. Read full book review >
Cover art for A BEGGAR IN JERUSALEM
FICTION
Released: Jan. 26, 1969

"For many, a meaningful prophecy."
Throughout his published works, Wiesel, unique among Jewish authors who have survived the holocaust, has continually moved forward into the current Jewish experience, joining terror to hope, death to continuity, anonymity to identity. Read full book review >
Cover art for ONE GENERATION AFTER
FICTION
Released: Nov. 16, 1970

"Wiesel's tales, lectures and commemorative griefs are moving, penetrating, often raspingly excessive — the result perhaps of attempting an honest stance before the inexplicable."
To convey the truth of the holocaust in its totality...(the writer) must add as well the silence left behind by millions of unknowns...One cannot conceive of the holocaust except as a mystery, begotten by the dead." Read full book review >
Cover art for THE OATH
FICTION
Released: Nov. 15, 1973
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel

"Demanding and rewarding."
Again Wiesel's richly somber, close and faintly cantorial prose flows over and repolishes the same impenetrable mysteries: that the massacre of innocents transmits a lifelong burden to the survivor; and that the survivor, both doomed and blessed, is forced to confront the knowledge of death which is "not a solution but a question, the most human question of all." Read full book review >
Cover art for ANI MAAMIN
NONFICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 1974

"I believe" — from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, given new meaning by the Jews in the camps, an article of faith reaffirmed yet again here as a cantata. Read full book review >
Cover art for A JEW TODAY
NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 12, 1978
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel

"No cumulative effect but, with the Holocaust, a strong, inescapable impact."
Recent essays. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE TRIAL OF GOD
NONFICTION
Released: May 17, 1979
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel

"Finding a shape for the ultimate seriousness that infuses his thought remains Wiesel's thorn; his success here again is only intermittent."
Inside "the kingdom of night"—the concentration camp—Wiesel actually witnessed a trial which put God up as the accused, charged with being either accepting of or blind to the murder of HIS chosen people. Read full book review >
Cover art for FROM THE KINGDOM OF MEMORY
NONFICTION
Released: Aug. 1, 1990

"Wiesel continues to speak of shameful and painful events in human history, wounding and enlightening at the same time."
In this collection of speeches and essays (some reprinted from the New York Times, Parade, etc.), Wiesel pleads passionately for preserving the integrity of memory and language in order to restore meaning to human life and its essential human attribute, language. Read full book review >
Cover art for SAGES AND DREAMERS
NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 1, 1991

"Informative and moving: a rich collage."
Reflections by the Nobel-winning philosopher and novelist on the prophets, scribes, and rebbes who comprise the histories and myths of Jewish folklore. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE FORGOTTEN
FICTION
Released: April 1, 1992

"Another wise and somber facet of Wiesel's exploration of the nurturing bonds between generations of living and dead."
"To forget is to abandon, to forget is to repudiate." Read full book review >
Cover art for ALL RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA
NONFICTION
Released: Dec. 1, 1995

"And he ceaselessly pricks the conscience of a world that thinks it is possible to have heard "enough" about the Holocaust."
Drenched with sad yearning, yet narrated with simplicity in the limpid singsong that distinguishes his oral as well as written narrative, Wiesel's memoir reveals much, if not enough, about the man whose purpose in life has been to testify to the fate of his people. Read full book review >
Cover art for AND THE SEA IS NEVER FULL
NONFICTION
Released: Dec. 1, 1999

"He is not always right – but the many times he is make the book worthwhile. (16 pages photos)"
Nobel Prize-winner Wiesel (All Rivers Run to the Sea, 1996, etc.) concludes his memoirs in his characteristically engaging and conversational tone. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE JUDGES
FICTION
Released: Aug. 27, 2002
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Geoffrey Strachan

"Human, unpretentious, compelling explorations of what we are, and why."
From the prolific Nobelist, a novel rather artificially constructed--but for the worthy purpose of looking inside to find what meaning life can hold for any of us. Read full book review >
Cover art for WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES
NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 14, 2003

"Wiesel proposes few definitive answers--here, the question mark appears as often as the period. But his explorations, drawing on the collective wisdom of prophets, rabbis, and scholars from the earliest days to the present, are endlessly illuminating."
Nobel Prize–winning novelist and memoirist Wiesel (The Judges, 2002, etc.) leads readers on a spirited, sometimes contentious journey through Jewish history and thought. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE TIME OF THE UPROOTED
FICTION
Released: Aug. 16, 2005
by Elie Wiesel, translated by David Hapgood

"A humane, optimistic tale most eloquently told."
"Do you know why God created us? So we could tell one another stories." Novelist, memoirist and folklorist Wiesel (Wise Men and Their Tales, 2003, etc.) blends fiction, legend and perhaps reminiscence in a moving tale of a fast-disappearing time. Read full book review >
Cover art for NIGHT
NONFICTION
Released: Jan. 16, 2006
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel

"The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance."
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. Read full book review >
Cover art for A MAD DESIRE TO DANCE
FICTION
Released: Feb. 19, 2009
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Catherine Temerson

"Philosophy meets psychology in this profound, often poetic novel."
Interactions between a patient and his therapist elucidate the human condition in the latest from Nobel Prize winner Wiesel (The Time of the Uprooted, 2005, etc.). Read full book review >
Cover art for THE SONDERBERG CASE
FICTION
Released: Aug. 27, 2010
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Catherine Temerson

"A slim novel that's heavy on philosophy."
The latest from the Nobel Peace Prize–winning author of Night(1960) asks big questions about good and evil, art and reality, yet ultimately finds its narrator concluding, "Suddenly, I don't understand anything anymore. Why life? Why death?" Read full book review >
Cover art for HOSTAGE
FICTION
Released: Aug. 24, 2012
by Elie Wiesel, translated by Catherine Temerson

"Nobel Peace Prize winner Wiesel continues to remind us of the brilliant possibilities of the philosophical and political novel. "
Wiesel takes us on a journey through dream, memory and especially storytelling in his latest novel, which concerns Shaltiel Feigenberg, who in 1975, is captured and imprisoned for 80 hours in a basement by two captors. Read full book review >