Night

Author: Elie Wiesel
Year: 1960
Famous for: Unflinching descriptions of Holocaust brutality, a search for faith, survival.
Main character: Eliezer, a Jewish boy trapped in one of history’s greatest nightmares—the Holocaust.

Night isn’t like any other book you’ll ever read. And that’s not just because of its descriptions of brutality and dehumanization and unimaginable cruelty. It’s because this story is for real. It’s a memoir by a guy who was a Jewish teenager living in Europe during the Holocaust—and who managed to survive to tell about it.

Eliezer is a pretty average teenager when Night begins. He goes to school, practices his religion, doesn’t think much about the future. But then the Nazis show up. Then Eliezer says goodbye to his mother and sisters—forever. And then begins the most terrifying journey of Eliezer’s life.

Elie Wiesel’s Night isn’t an easy book to read. What Eliezer goes through is painful and haunting and, in places, almost unbearably upsetting. But the pinprick of light in all the darkness is that Eliezer does survive to tell his story—and to testify to the remarkable strength of the human spirit.