Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The story of 'Night' by Elie Wiesel

In the late 1950s, long before the advent of Holocaust memoirs and Holocaust studies, Wiesel’s account of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald was turned down by more than 15 publishers before the small firm Hill & Wang finally accepted it. How “Night” became an evergreen is more than a publishing phenomenon. It is also a case study in how a book helped created a genre, how a writer became an icon and how the Holocaust was absorbed into the American experience.


Do I dare admit publicly that I've never read it? Oops, I think I just did. Further embarrassing admissions of unread classics are welcome in the comments section of this post. If you dare.

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