The Testament; A Novel
New York: Summit Books, 1981. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 346, [4] pages. Signed by the author on the second free end paper. Eliezer Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Along with writing, he was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. C. In his political activities, he also campaigned for victims of oppression in places like South Africa, Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Sudan. He remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He was described as "the most important Jew in America" by the Los Angeles Times. On August 12, 1952, Russia's greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this remarkable blend of history and imagination, Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate but, unlike his real-life counterparts, he is permitted to leave a written testament. From a Jewish boyhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, Paltiel traveled down a road that embraced Communism, only to return to Russia and discover a Communist Party that had become his mortal enemy. Two decades later, Paltiel's son, Grisha, reads this precious record of his father's life and finds that it illuminates the shadowed planes of his own. Passionate and fierce, this story of a father's legacy to his son revisits some of the most dramatic events of our century, and confirms yet again Elie Wiesel's stature as "a writer of the highest moral imagination" ("San Francisco Chronicle"). The novel won the Prix Livre Inter, and Prix des Bibliothécaires, Prix Interallie 1980 and was nominated for the Prix Concourt. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Novels, Fiction, Paltiel Kossover, Jews, Russians, Poets, Executions, Communism, Palestine, Spanish Civil War, Red Army, Prisoners, David Aboulesia, Zupanev
[Book #77219]
Price: $175.00