Rating: 5/5
This is the third and last novel in the powerful and original
Night trilogy. Inspired by a true story, the book narrates Wiesel’s time in hospital after being hit by a taxi cab in New York, relating what thoughts crossed his mind as he lay convalescing. He mentions a great deal two important factors of life: Love and Death. The two are dependant on each other, but can you have either after having experienced the horrors of Nazi concentration camps? Can a life be subject to Faith, Love, Happiness, Pity? Wiesel explores these concepts in a fantastically majestic book.
While recovering from his injury (which broke all the bones in the left side of his body, caused internal haemorrhages and severe brain concussion), Wiesel is haunted by the ghosts of dead friends, family and strangers. A recurring figure is his deceased grandmother (
I was thinking of my grandmother whose face was white like the transparent desert sand, and whose shawl was as black as the dense night of cemeteries).
I adore Wiesel’s style of writing. It is unique and fascinating. He is by far one of my favourite authors—no wonder he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Here are a few examples of some of his reflections:
I was still thinking about death and didn’t want her to talk to me. It is only in silence, leaning over a river in winter, that one can really think about death.
Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul—and worse, the souls of your friends—for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep. Saints are those who die before the end of the story.