The first three works of Elie Wiesel's, previously published separately by Hill and Wang, are here brought together. The terrifying truth of their vision, the stunning simplicity with which they are told, and the power of their unity achieve epic dimensions.
Night, with a Foreword by François Mauriac, is a true account of spiritual and national exile. Elisha and his family, among hundreds of thousands of Jews from all parts of Eastern Europe, are cruelly deported from their Transylvanian home town, Sighet, to the horror of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where Nietzsche's dead God takes on an almost physical reality. Wiesel describes in striking detail the living death he saw and felt there.
In Dawn, Wiesel's first novel, Elisha is the sole survivor of his family, whose immolation he witnessed at Auschwitz. He finds himself a member of the underground in British-controlled Palestine and the chosen executioner of an English hostage. During the lonely hours before dawn he meditates the act of murder he is waiting to commit. His fear and faith mirror the soul of a people whose suffering has revealed to it the necessity and beauty of rebellion.
In The Accident, Wiesel's second novel, Elisha, a successful journalist living in New York, is victim of a nearly fatal automobile accident. The temptation to self-destruction is the focus of a spiritual struggle for a man who has seen too much evil and known too well the contingency of human freedom not to question the value of easy absolutes. His visions are more real than the love of a woman.
All three tales are at once devastating and illuminating, truly the work of spiritual and human genius.
—from the dust jacket
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