The Judges - Hardcover

Wiesel, Elie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375409092 ISBN 13: 9780375409097

Publisher: Knopf, 2002

Synopsis

From Elie Wiesel, a gripping novel of guilt, innocence, and the perilousness of judging both.

A plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv is forced down by bad weather. A nearby house provides refuge for five of its passengers: Claudia, who has left her husband and found new love; Razziel, a religious teacher who was once a political prisoner; Yoav, a terminally ill Israeli commando; George, an archivist who is hiding a Holocaust secret that could bring down a certain politician; and Bruce, a would-be priest turned philanderer.

Their host—an enigmatic and disquieting man who calls himself simply the Judge—begins to interrogate them, forcing them to face the truth and meaning of their lives. Soon he announces that one of them—the least worthy—will die.

The Judges is a powerful novel that reflects the philosophical, religious, and moral questions that are at the heart of Elie Wiesel’s work.

About this title

Review:

Distinguished author, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel continues his exploration of guilt, innocence, history, and memory, but with a new twist. Wiesel moves the battle for the human soul from the Holocaust to the rarefied setting of a Connecticut parlor. There, five strangers, stranded during a snowstorm, find themselves manipulated by a sadistic host who calls himself the Judge and declares that one of them will die before morning. Through the long night, the characters take stock of their lives and indentify what inspires them to cling to life. There is George, the archivist who has discovered a dangerously revealing document and whose "ambition it is to evoke the memory of memory"; Yoav, the Israeli commando who believes that "each man was his own executioner and his own victim"; and Razziel, who lost the memory of his childhood to torturers and was on his way to meet the man who could unlock his past. While the characterizations are uneven (Bruce, the playboy, is stock stuff and the Judge's deification of evil is not entirely convincing), Wiesel's philosophical fable is powerful and thought provoking, and increasingly relevant in an age concerned with terrorism and the questions of good and evil. --Lesley Reed

About the Author:

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than forty books, including his unforgettable international best-sellers Night and
A Beggar in Jerusalem, winner of the Prix Médicis. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor with the rank of Grand Cross. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University. He lives with his wife, Marion, in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375409092
• ISBN 13: 9780375409097
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224