The Night Circus

by Erin Morgenstern · 2011

Night is Elie Wiesel’s harrowing memoir of his experiences as a twelve‑year‑old Jewish boy from the Hungarian town of Sighet who is deported to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald during the Holocaust. The narrative follows his initial devotion to the Torah, the disbelief of his community when warned of Nazi atrocities, the brutal separation from his mother and sister, the dehumanizing process of being tattooed and forced into labor, and the gradual erosion of his faith as he witnesses children burned, endless cruelty, and the death of his father. Wiesel’s stark, unflinching prose records the physical and spiritual night that fell over the victims, offering a moral testimony to the capacity for evil and the struggle to retain humanity amid unimaginable suffering.