Night

A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel

Night is Elie Wiesel masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Author Bio: Elie Wiesel is the internationally celebrated author, Nobel laureate, and spokesperson for humanity whose decision to dedicate his life to bearing witness for the Holocaust’s martyrs and survivors found its earliest and most enduring voice in Night, his penetrating and profound account of the Nazi death camps. Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, he was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel’s memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man.

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America Congressional Gold Medal, the French Legion of Honor, and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University.

《Night》是作者對二次大戰納粹集中營的回憶錄。1944年，當身為猶太人的作者與家人被趕出家門、送至奧許維茲集中營時，他還是十五歲的少年。在這段恐怖的經歷中，他面對家人的死亡、自己天真的逝去，以及人類絕對的邪惡所帶來的深刻絕望。

本書是作者1958年的處女作，出版近50年以來，已翻譯成30多種語文，被譽為與《安妮的日記》以及義大利作家普利摩．李維（Primo Levi）回憶錄《如果這是一個人》（If This Is a Man）齊名的經典作品。他不僅詳述出集中營裡每日生活中的驚恐、荒謬與無處不在的殘忍虐待，更不斷試圖詰問納粹大屠殺的本質、背景與後遺症。他控訴上帝不公，卻又常不自覺地向上帝祈禱。身為虔誠的猶太教信徒，他很想知道：「慈悲的上帝到哪兒去了？」

本書最初以意第緒語寫成，名為「而世界依然緘默」，首先譯成法文，但被多數出版社退稿。後來經過諾貝爾文學獎得主莫里亞克數月的走訪、書信往來以及電話聯繫，才終於由「子夜出版社」付梓出版。法文書名La Nuit直譯為「夜」，便是暗喻集中營的歷程就如無盡的夜，也是一生中最恐怖的夜。

本書的出版目的，就如作者在今年新出的英文版的新序裡最後所說，是「為了今天的年輕人、為了明日即將誕生的孩子」，「強迫自己作見證，他不想讓自己的過去變成他們的未來。」
(中文版由左岸2006年10月出版)