A Beggar in Jerusalem - by Elie Wiesel (Paperback)

About the Book

Elie Wiesel's bestselling tale of the beggars and madmen, survivors and fighters, victors and victims who congregate at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in the days following the Six-Day War brilliantly weaves together myth and mystery, parable and paradox.

Book Synopsis

When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory."

This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem.

Review Quotes

"One of the rare books: a spiritual adventure so profound that it demands to be judged in terms of world literature."
--The Washington Post

"Very remarkable, indeed, outstanding."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Perhaps the first major novel to bring to bear on the destiny of the Jew all the resources of modern European literary experience combined with the storytelling techniques of the Hasidic masters."
--The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

ELIE WIESEL was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The author of more than fifty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University for forty years. Wiesel died in 2016.