Night

Night is a memoir by Elie Wiesel, first published in Yiddish as  Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Kept Quiet )   in 1956 in Buenos Aires by Union Central Israelita Polaca en la Argentina. The book is a harrowing account of Wiesel's experiences as a teenager during the Holocaust, detailing his imprisonment in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the brutal conditions and atrocities he witnessed and endured. Through his haunting and poignant narrative, Wiesel raises fundamental questions about the nature of humanity, morality, and faith. A heavily abridged edition of the novel (from 253 pages to around 144) was published in France in 1957 under the title  La Nuit , with an introduction by French writer and Nobel laureate François Mauriac. Publishers in the US rejected the English translation, believing the audience for books recounting the horrors of the Holocaust to be limited. Hill and Wang finally agreed to publish the novel, paying Wiesel an advance of $250. Although well-reviewed, the book initially sold very slowly, with only 1,046 copies selling in the first 18 months at $3 each. It took three full years before the first print run of 3,000 copies sold out. By 1997  Night  was selling 300,000 copies a year in the United States. In 2006 Hill and Wang released a new translation by Wiesel's wife, Marion Wiesel, and a new preface by the author. It was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, and became a New York Times bestseller. By 2011 it had sold six million copies and was available in 30 languages.

Read More: Identifying first editions of Night

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Michael Diesman

Michael Diesman

About Michael Diesman