The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories by Ilan Stavans (ed.)

Author:Ilan Stavans (ed.) [(ed.), Ilan Stavans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short stories, Jewish, Jews, Jewish fiction
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

Elie Wiesel

(Hungary-France-United States, b.1928)

Devoted to safeguarding the memory of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel, who began his writing career in Yiddish and then switched to French, is the author of three dozen books, including novels, memoirs, plays, and stories. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986, he is considered one of the world’s greatest proponents of “peace, atonement, and human dignity,” as his Nobel citation reads. Wiesel was born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, where he studied the Torah, the Talmud, and Hasidic literature. His works include the novel Night (English, 1960) originally written in Yiddish (1956) but published first in a shorter French adaptation (1958) with a foreword by writer and politician Francois Mauriac. The novel chronicles the deportation of fifteen thousand Jews of Sighet, including Wiesel, his parents, and three sisters. It follows their ordeal up until Wiesel and his father are transported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The scenes in which the son is responsible for his dying father, who is suffering from dysentery, are haunting. “No sensitive reader will feel an impulse to judgment here,” writes critic Irving Howe. “Indeed, that is one of the major effects of honest testimony about the Holocaust—it dissolves any impulse to judge what the victims did or did not do, since those are situations so extreme that it seems immoral to make judgments about those who must endure them.” Wiesel is also widely known for his retellings of Hasidic tales. In fact, he has been anointed a rabbinical sage by secular Jews. His books include The Gates of the Forest (1966); One Generation After (1970), of which “The True Waiting” is part; A Beggar in Jerusalem (1970); Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1972); A Jew Today (1978); and Twilight (1988). Wiesel became an American citizen in 1963. He teaches at Boston University.

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