The Testament - by Elie Wiesel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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).

Review Quotes

"A wonderful, huge novel that sings with imagination and great-heartedness."
--The Boston Globe

"Reaches a climax of tragic power. . . . [Wiesel] has wrested life out of death."
--D. M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel

"A fervent, eloquent, and disciplined account of the moral journey endemic to our times."
--Christian Science Monitor

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.