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In the U.S., he eventually wrote over 40 books, most of them non-fiction Holocaust literature, and novels. As an author, he was awarded a number of literary prizes and is considered among the most important in describing the Holocaust from a highly personal perspective. [32]
- Night. Night is without a doubt Wiesel’s best-known novel. It follows Eliezer, a Jewish teenager, from Transylvania who is a stand-in for Elie Wiesel himself.
- Dawn. Dawn is the second novel in the Night trilogy. It’s a work of fiction, one that focuses on Elisha, another Holocaust survivor. It follows Elisha after the war as he moves to Palestine and joins a paramilitary group seeking to remove the British from the area.
- Day. Day is the final novel in the Night trilogy. It follows a Holocaust survivor who is hit by a taxi in New York City. He spends most of the book recovering from his injuries and trying to come to terms with what happened to him during the Second World War.
- Open Heart. Open Heart is a memoir of Wiesel’s life up to the age of eighty-two. He speaks on his contemporary worries, emergency heart surgery, and his coming death, as well as looking back on his life, his children, and grandchildren.
- “Night” (1960) Arguably the most influential book on the Holocaust, “Night” brought the atrocities faced by Jews in the concentration camps to the forefront of American consciousness.
- “Dawn” and “Day” (1961, 1962) Along with “Night,” these two works form a trilogy that deals with the Holocaust and its aftereffects. Although “Night” has been variously described as a memoir, a novel and a “testimony” (by Wiesel himself), these two books are decidedly fictional.
- “The Jews of Silence” (1967) Advertisement. In 1965, Wiesel was sent to the Soviet Union by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. His observations on the plight of Jews there — who suffered from anti-Semitic discrimination and were forbidden to publicly practice their religion — became the catalyst for an activist and political movement in the West that eventually helped thousands migrate to Israel and other countries in the 1980s.
- “A Beggar in Jerusalem” (1970) Wiesel turned his imagination to the Six-Day War in this novel originally written in French, which won France’s prestigious Prix Medicis award.
Elie Wiesel is the author of more than sixty books of fiction and non-fiction. He had received numerous awards for his literary and human rights activities including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, and the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor.
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) is best known as the author of Night, survivor of Auschwitz and a powerful, enduring voice of the Holocaust. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he was a hero of human rights, professor and author of more than 50 books.
A Biographical Overview. Wiesel at age 15. Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, was born in the provincial town of Sighet, Romania on September 30, 1928. A Jewish community...