Victoria Nesfield & Philip Smith 
The Struggle for Understanding 
Elie Wiesel’s Literary Works

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) was one of the most important literary voices to emerge from the Holocaust. The Nazis took the lives of most of his family, destroyed the community in which he was raised, and subjected him to ghettoization, imprisonment in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and a death march. It is remarkable not only that Wiesel survived and found a way to write about his experiences, but that he did so with elegance and profundity. His novels grapple with questions of tradition, memory, trauma, madness, atrocity, and faith.
The Struggle for Understanding examines Wiesel’s literary, religious, and cultural roots and the indelible impact of the Holocaust on his storytelling. Grouped in sections on Hasidic origins, the role of the Other, theology and tradition, and later works, the chapters cover the entire span of Wiesel’s career. Books analyzed include the novels
Dawn,
The Forgotten,
The Gates of the Forest,
The Town Beyond the Wall,
The Testament,
The Time of the Uprooted,
The Sonderberg Case, and
Hostage, as well as his memoir,
Night. What emerges is a portrait of Wiesel’s work in its full literary richness.

Table of Content

Foreword


Peppy Margolis



Introduction


Victoria Nesfield and
Philip Smith




Part I. Hasidic Origins



1. Between Fiction and Reality: Elie Wiesel’s Memoirs


Menachem Keren-Kratz



2. The Death of Humanity and the Need for a Glory Culture: The Existential Project of Elie Wiesel


Yakir Englander



3. The Role of the Four Prophet Figures in
Night


Mary Catherine Mueller




Part II. The Other



4. Embracing Madness: Elie Wiesel’s Madmen and Their Role in His Works


Jennifer Murray



5. The Bystander in Elie Wiesel’s
The Town Beyond the Wall


Christin Zühlke



6. Enduring Anti-Semitic Christian Scripts in Elie Wiesel’s
The Gates of the Forest


Lucas Wilson




Part III. Theology and Tradition



7. Stories Untold: Theology, Language, and the Hasidic Spirit in Elie Wiesel’s
The Gates of the Forest


Ariel Evan Mayse



8. Testifying, Writing, and Putting God in the Dock: Elie Wiesel and the Crisis of Traditional Theodicy


Federico Dal Bo



9. The Importance of Memory: Jewish Mysticism and Preserving History in Elie Wiesel’s
The Forgotten


Eric J. Sterling




Part IV. Later Works



10. Transcultural Networks of Holocaust Memories in Elie Wiesel’s
The Time of the Uprooted


Dana Miha
˘
ilescu



11. Wiesel’s Political Vision in
Dawn,
The Testament, and
Hostage


Rosemary Horowitz



12. Allegories of the Holocaust in Elie Wiesel’s Late Fiction:
The Forgotten,
The Sonderberg Case, and
Hostage


Sue Vice



Contributors

Index

About the author

Victoria Nesfield is Research Coordinator in the Humanities Research Centre at the University of York, in the United Kingdom.
Philip Smith is Professor of English at the Savannah College of Art and Design Hong Kong.