F.B.F: Night

Flashback Friday:  Night

Flashback Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies and it's a way to show a little love to those books that hold a special place in our hearts. There are no set rules aside from the fact that the book must be at least five years old.

This week I'm flashing back to tenth grade when I read Night by Elie Wiesel.  I remember being shocked and appalled by this book...and fascinated.  Published in 1958, the short book chronicles the harrowing experience of a Nazi Death March in which Wiesel was a victim.  His description is fluid, heartwrenching, and angering.  Perhaps one of the best known and most widely read works of Holocaust Literature, aside from The Diary of Anne Frank, Night bears witness to the atrocities inflicted on the various peoples victimized by the Nazi regime.

The book opens with a horrifying scene that involves Nazis, rifles, and babies (I will spare you the details) and continues on in its atrocious manner.  Taking place in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, two of the most aggressively extreme concentration camps, Wiesel chronicles his and his father's time spent during the year of 1944-1945.  It's fragmented and sparsely linked together, touching on not only their personal experiences, but also on his loss of faith in humanity and God.  He also discusses how his relationship changes with his father.

Night is the book that started my studies of the Holocaust and its literature.  It had such an influence on my education in terms of which direction I eventually pursued for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.  And for that I am incredibly indebted to Wiesel.  If you have yet to read this novel, all 115 pages of it, I highly recommend doing so.  You're worldview will be changed; I promise.

Are there any books that have shaped your future?

Happy reading!