An Annotated Bibliography of Books by Elie Wiesel
(By U.S. publication dates)

NIGHT (Hill and Wang 1960; Bantam)
A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family, of his innocence, and of his God.

DAWN (Hill and Wang 1961; Bantam)
A young member of the Jewish underground in British-controlled Palestine guards a captured British officer. A survivor of Auschwitz himself, he is tortured by conflict when he is ordered to shoot the hostage in reprisal for the execution by the British of a Jewish prisoner.

THE ACCIDENT (Hill and Wang 1962; Bantam)
Within the framework of a love affair and a near-fatal automobile accident on the streets of New York, a sensitive man has lost the will to live because he has seen too much of death; he cannot love because he has lived too long with hate. Eventually, he will have to choose between the past and the present, and between life and death.

THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL (Atheneum 1964)
Michael, a young Jew who has survived Nazi torment, decides to go back to the town behind the Iron Curtain where he grew up, and from where he and his family were deported to the death camps. He seeks to solve the mystery, in dialogues with his friend, of all those in the town who stood by and never lifted a hand while victim and executioner acted out their grisly play.

THE GATES OF THE FOREST (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966)
As young Gregor flees from Nazi annihilation, he becomes a betrayer and pursues a phantom. As he loves and survives, one question recurs: How to live in a world that God has clearly abandoned?

THE JEWS OF SILENCE (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966)
Wiesel visited Russia in 1965 and returned in 1966. After traveling to five cities and speaking to hundreds of Jews, he wrote this report on a community living in fear yet defiantly preserving its ancient traditions. Originally written as a series of articles, in Hebrew, for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

LEGENDS OF OUR TIME (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1968)
A collection of narrative stories and essays, beginning with A Plea For The Dead, which demolishes the notion that the Jews marched to their death in concentration camps without apparent resistance. In this collection, the line between fiction and nonfiction blurs to give a powerful new dimension to Wiesel's work. In it Wiesel writes: "…some events do take place but are not true; others are-although they never occurred."

A BEGGAR IN JERUSALEM (Random House 1970 — winner of the Prix Medicis)
Set in the six-day war, the novel depicts, in Wiesel's words, "an adventure of one madman, who one night saw not the end of all things, but their beginning… the man who came to Jerusalem as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory."

ONE GENERATION AFTER (Random House 1970)
A non-fiction narrative that begins at the time of the Second World War and ends with the Six-Day war; a collection of pieces, some cast as tales, others as dialogues or as autobiography, in which the author is trying to remember and re-evaluate episodes covering a twenty-five year span of his life, centering on his return to the village of his boyhood.

SOULS ON FIRE (Random House 1972)
Portraits of the leaders of the Hasidic movement that created a revolution in the Jewish world. Through tales, legends, parables, sayings and deeply personal reflections, Wiesel captures the essence of an 18th century movement that emphasizes mysticism, prayer, religious zeal and joy.

NIGHT TRILOGY (Hill and Wang 1972)
Brings together the three inter-related novels Night, Dawn and The Accident in a single volume.

THE OATH (Random House 1973)
Azriel, an old wanderer is the sole survivor of a pogrom which destroys his small Carpathian community. Its people are sworn, should any of them survive, never to speak of the town's last days and nights of wait and terror. And so for decades he roams the earth searching for someone with the authority to release him from his vow. At last, fifty years after the event, Azriel encounters a young stranger who wishes to die. What arguments can he invoke to dissuade him? He decides to tell the story of the death of his town, breaking his vow in hopes his story will save a life.

ANI MAAMIN (I Believe) A Cantata (Random House 1973)
Set to music by Darius Milhaud and first performed at Carnegie Hall on November 11 and 13, 1973, Wiesel's words are based on a prayerful song which is an expression of faith in the coming of the Messiah. Wiesel, as a boy of 16, was amazed to hear it sung by Jews in Auschwitz. "How could they believe in the Messiah over there? How could they go on waiting for him?" In the cantata, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob go to God to speak to him of the tragedy befalling his people — of what they had seen on earth. But God remains silent, and the three patriarchs decide to leave heaven and return to be at the side of the victims below.

ZALMEN, OR THE MADNESS OF GOD, A PLAY (Random House 1974)
The play is the result of a trip he made to Russian in 1965, during which the Jews of silence he was to write of could not speak the truth about their condition. In a small Russian synagogue on the eve of a visit by a group of Western actors, the Jews in the community are warned by the Russian authorities and by their own leaders to avoid contact with the foreigners. But Zalmen, the lowly beadle of the congregation, chastises the Rabbi for his silence. Suddenly, the Rabbi begins to speak like a prophet, to curse wrong, and, in a mystical frenzy to exalt righteousness.

MESSENGERS OF GOD (Random House 1976)
Wiesel retells the timeless stories of the heroes of the Bible — of Adam and Job and Jacob, of Abraham, Joseph and Moses. The tales are of living men and women, not symbols; of human beings possessed of weaknesses, shortcomings, moments of ecstasy and confusion, as they were at the crossroads of their lives: troubled, exalted, marked.

A JEW TODAY (Random House 1978)
This wide-ranging book weaves together all the periods of the author's life, interpreting events of the time to reveal underlying moral and human issues. His open letters — to a young Palestinian Arab, to an Israeli, to a young Jew in the Soviet Union — are infused with both passion and compassion.

FOUR HASIDIC MASTERS (University of Notre Dame Press 1978)
Subtitled "And Their Struggle Against Melancholy", this sequel to Souls on Fire brings to life four great charismatic leaders of the Hasidic movement among Eastern European Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries — Pinhas of Koretz, Barukh of Medzebozh, the holy Seer of Lublin, and Naphtali of Ropshitz.

IMAGES FROM THE BIBLE (The Overlook Press 1980)
This book combines selections from the writing of Elie Wiesel with paintings of Shalom of Safed.

THE TRIAL OF GOD, a play (Random House 1979)
Set in a 17th century Ukrainian village, three itinerant actors arrive at an inn to perform a Purim play. To their horror, they learn that there has been a pogrom, and only Berish, the innkeeper and his daughter, Hannah have survived the brutal Cossack raids. Berish demands that instead of a play they stage a mock trial of God, indicting Him for His silence in the face of evil.

THE TESTAMENT (Summit 1981)
In August 12, 1952, Russia's greatest Jewish poets and novelists were executed by Stalin, and vanished without a trace. Elie Wiesel pays homage to their memory by gathering the lives of these martyrs into one fictional character, a Jew converted to communism, who sheds his innocence year by year.Finally imprisoned, he is permitted to write his testament, which forms the heart of the novel.

FIVE BIBLICAL PORTRAITS (University of Notre Dame Press 1981)
Joshua, Saul, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Jonah: all major figures in Jewish history — blessed and burdened with prophetic destinies. Who were these people who vanquished armies and unified kingdoms? Wiesel illuminates these individuals, giving us their humanity in its mysterious and fascinating complexity.

SOMEWHERE A MASTER (Summit 1982)
Wiesel takes us back to 18th and 19th century Europe, an age of bloodshed and overturned altars, a time not unlike our own, to tell how a handful of remarkable rabbis helped their people overcome despair, hopelessness, and isolation with joy and simple faith. All disciples of the same man, the charismatic Hasidic master Baal Shem Tov, each sought and found his own way to turn Jewish solitude into sanctuary.

THE GOLEM (illustrated by Mark Podwal (Summit 1983)
Centuries-old Jewish legends tell of a Golem, a creature of clay given life by the mysterious 16th century Rabbi Yehuda Loew of Prague, who was either a lovable mute or a Frankenstein monster who turned against his creator. Wiesel has collected many of these legends, retelling them through the eyes of a gravedigger who claims to have witnessed the Golem's miracles. He describes the Golem not as a monster, but a figure of intuition, intelligence and compassion who may yet return to protect the Jews from their enemies.

THE FIFTH SON (Summit 1985)
Reuven Tamiroff, a Holocaust survivor living in America, has never been able to speak about his experiences to his son, who yearns to understand his father's silence. Reuven has a terrible secret; to avenge a death, he participated in the murder of a former SS officer in the years following the war. The son discovers his father's secret, only to make the astonishing discovery that the SS officer, now a prosperous German businessman, is still alive. He sets out for Germany in this novel of encounters — between father and son, victim and executioner, past and present.

AGAINST SILENCE, ed. Irving Abrahamson (Holocaust Library 1985
A three-volume set containing selected works from Wiesel's writing.

TWILIGHT (Summit 1988)
Raphael Lipkin, is a man possessed. A professor of literature and Holocaust survivor, he sees a life he had rebuilt coming apart again. He longs to talk to Pedro, the man who rescued him as a fifteen-year-old orphan from postwar Poland and became his mentor. But Pedro disappeared inside the prisons of Stalin's Russia. Where is he now when Lipkin needs him? A mysterious nighttime caller directs him to the Mountain Clinic, a unique asylum for patients whose delusions spring from the Bible. Amid patients calling themselves Adam, Cain, Abraham, Joseph, Jeremiah and God, Raphael searches for Pedro's truth and the meaning of his own survival.

THE SIX DAYS OF DESTRUCTION, with Albert Friedlander (Paulist Press 1988).
"Here are six chronicles by Elie Wiesel, each telling the personal story of one victim's experience during the Holocaust. Woven around these stories are the biblical narratives of the six days of creation. They stand together as a testimony of hope in the midst of the darkness. In addition, Rabbi Albert Friedlander has prepared a new liturgy for congregational observances of Yom Hashoah, Kirstallnacht and other Holocaust-related memorials. Included also is a special service for Christian or interreligious observances. The Shoah, while it is a uniquely Jewish event, also belongs to the entire human family. If we Christians are true to ourselves, then we will acknowledge that the pain and horror of the Holocaust are also ours." — Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, late Archbishop of Chicago

A JOURNEY OF FAITH, conversations with John Cardinal O'Connor (Donald I. Fine 1990)
In this dialogue, which took place at St. Joseph’s' Seminary in Yonkers, New York and was moderated by veteran reporter Gabe Pressman for WNBC-TV, Elie Wiesel and Cardinal O'Connor shared moments of their past that profoundly changes their lives. On subjects ranging from anti-Semitism to the horrors of the Holocaust, nothing was off-limits for these two men of faith.

FROM THE KINGDOM OF MEMORY (Summit 1990)
A collection of landmark speeches and personal essays that have defined Wiesel as an advocate for humanity. Included are Wiesel's testimony at the trial of Klaus Barbie, his impassioned plea to President Reagan not to visit Bitburg Cemetery, where members of the S.S. were buried; his address at the Reichstag, from the very rostrum where the annihilation of his own family and his entire people was decreed, and the address he delivered in Oslo in 1986 upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

EVIL AND EXILE, with Philippe de Saint-Cheron (University of Notre Dame Press 1990)
In a six-day series of interviews with a noted French journalist, Wiesel offers candid views on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Judeo-Christian relations, changes in the Soviet Union, and insights into writers such as Kafka, Malraux, Mauriac and Unamuno.

SAGES AND DREAMERS (Summit 1991)
Based on lectures he has given for twenty-five years at New York's 92nd Street Y, Wiesel provides twenty-five portraits of Jewish masters who have fired his own imagination. "Each of these figures," he writes, "stands for an epoch and its problems, conflicts, and aspirations, which are often surprisingly close to our own." He explores such puzzles as why did Jephtah agree to kill his only daughter? Was King Solomon strong or weak, hungry for power or for wisdom? Why was Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa silent about the destruction of Jerusalem? In these explorations, he provides a vibrant and humanizing encounter with Jewish existence.

THE FORGOTTEN (Summit 1992)
A distinguished psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor is losing his memory to an incurable disease. Never having spoken of the war years before, he resolves to tell his son about his past — the heroic parts as well as those that fill him with shame. His story compels his son to go to the Romanian village where the crime that continues to haunt his father was committed. There he encounters the improbable wisdom of a gravedigger, who leads him to the grave of his grandfather and to the truths that bind one generation to another.

A PASSOVER HAGGADAH, illustrated by Mark Podwal (Simon and Schuster 1993)
Accompanying the traditional Haggadah text that is read each year at the Passover Seder table, here presented in an accessible new translation, are Elie Wiesel's poetic interpretations, reminiscences, and instructive retellings of ancient legends.

ALL RIVERS RUN TO THE SEA, Memoirs, Vol. I, 1928-1969 (Knopf 1995)
In this first volume of a two-volume autobiography, Wiesel takes the reader from his childhood memories of a traditional and loving Jewish family life in a Carpathian village, through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and the years of spiritual struggle, to his emergence as a witness for Israel and for the Holocaust's martyrs and survivors and as a spokesman for humanity.

MEMOIR IN TWO VOICES, with Francois Mitterand (Arcade 1996)
Near the end of his second term as president of France, Francois Mitterand decided to talk openly about his life, both personal and political. He turned to Elie Wiesel, a close friend of many years, to join him in a vibrant exchange. Their dialogue is spontaneous, thoughtful, lyrical, blunt and candid, whether in involves controversial moments in Mitterand's political career, Wiesel's memories of Auschwitz, family, religion, or their favorite books and walks.

AND THE SEA IS NEVER FULL, memoirs Vol. II, 1969 — (Knopf 1999)
As this concluding volume of his moving and revealing memoirs begins, Wiesel is forty years old, a writer of international repute. Determined to speak out more actively for both Holocaust survivors and the disenfranchised everywhere, he sets himself a challenge: "I will become militant. I will teach, share, bear witness. I will reveal and try to mitigate the victims' solitude." He makes words his weapon, and in these pages we relive with him his unstinting battles — defending Jews and dissidents in the Soviet Union, battling apartheid and supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa, calling on the world to face up to the atrocities in Cambodia and Bosnia, visiting refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia. And we read candid accounts of his friendships and confrontations with some of the most powerful men of his time, including Ronald Reagan, Francois Mitterand, Lech Walesa and Yitzhak Rabin.

KING SOLOMON AND HIS MAGIC RING, illustrated by Mark Podwal (Greenwillow 1999)
A tribute to the legendary King Solomon. Solomon was famed for his wisdom and his capacity for judging fairly, and of the jewel in the crown of his forty-year reign, the glorious Temple in Jerusalem. But that was only the beginning, for Solomon was a man who asked God only for wisdom, but was given much, much more. For young readers.

CONVERSATIONS WITH ELIE WIESEL, with Richard D. Heffner (Schocken 2001)
An extended discourse between Wiesel and Rutgers University historian Richard D. Heffner, covering sometimes sensitive political and spiritual ground, global and local issues, the moral responsibilities of both individuals and governments, the anatomy of hate, the threat of technology, and much more.

THE JUDGES (Knopf 2002)
A gripping novel of guilt, innocence, and the perils of judging both. A plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv is forced down by bad weather. A nearby house provides refuge for five of its passengers: Claudia, who has left her husband and found new love; Razziel, a religious teacher who was once a political prisoner; Yoav, a terminally ill Israeli commando; George, an archivist who is hiding a Holocaust secret that could bring down a certain politician; and Bruce, a would-be priest turned philanderer. Their host — an enigmatic man who calls himself simply the Judge — begins to interrogate them, forcing them to face the truth and meaning of their lives. Soon he announces that one of them — the least worthy — will die.