Synopses & Reviews
"One of the great writers of our generation" (The New Republic) weaves together memories of his life before the Holocaust and his great struggle to find meaning afterwards. Included are Wiesel's landmark speeches, among them his powerful testimony at the trial of Klaus Barbie and his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Synopsis
In this "powerful"
(New York Times Book review) collection of personal essays and landmark speeches by "one of the great writers of our generation"
(New Republic), Elie Wiesel weaves together reminiscences of his life before the Holocaust, his struggle to find meaning afterward, and the actions he has taken on behalf of others that have defined him as a leading advocate of humanity and have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Here, too, as a tribute to the dead and an exhortation to the living are landmark speeches, among them his powerful testimony at the Klaus Barbie trial, his impassioned plea to President Reagan not to visit a German S.S. cemetery, and the speech he gave in Oslo in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, in which he voices his hope that "the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil."
Table of Contents
Why I Write
To Believe or Not to Believe
Inside a Library
The Stranger in the Bible
A Celebration of Friendship
Peretz Markish
Dialogues
Pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Night
Sighet Again
Kaddish in Cambodia
Making the Ghosts Speak
Passover
Meeting Again
Trivializing Memory
Bitburg
Testimony at the Barbie Trial
When Memory Brings People Together
More Dialogues
What Really Makes Us Free?
Are We Afraid of Peace?
The Nobel Address
The Nobel Lecture