Dawn

Book excerpt: Elie Wiesel's Dawn is an eloquent meditation on the compromises, justifications, and sacrifices that human beings make when they murder other human beings. "The author . . . has built knowledge into artistic fiction." —The New York Times Book Review Elisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel's ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative. Caught between the manifold horrors of the past and the troubling dilemmas of the present, Elisha wrestles with guilt, ghosts, and ultimately God as he waits for the appointed hour and his act of assassination. The basis for the 2014 film of the same name, now available on streaming and home video.