And the Sea Is Never Full
Memoirs, 1969-
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
As this concluding volume of his moving and revealing memoirs begins, Elie Wiesel is forty years old, a writer of international repute. Determined to speak out more actively for both Holocaust survivors and the disenfranchised everywhere, he sets himself a challenge: "I will become militant. I will teach, share, bear witness. I will reveal and try to mitigate the victims' solitude." He makes words his weapon, and in these pages we relive with him his unstinting battles. We see him meet with world leaders and travel to regions ruled by war, dictatorship, racism, and exclusion in order to engage the most pressing issues of the day. We see him in the Soviet Union defending persecuted Jews and dissidents; in South Africa battling apartheid and supporting Mandela's ascension; in Cambodia and in Bosnia, calling on the world to face the atrocities; in refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia as an emissary for President Clinton. He chastises Ronald Reagan for his visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg. He supports Lech Walesa but challenges some of his views. He confronts Francois Mitterrand over the misrepresentation of his activities in Vichy France. He does battle with Holocaust deniers. He joins tens of thousands of young Austrians demonstrating against renascent fascism in their country. He receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Through it all, Wiesel remains deeply involved with his beloved Israel, its leaders and its people, and laments its internal conflicts. He recounts the behind-the-scenes events that led to the establishment of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He shares the feelings evoked by his return to Auschwitz, by his recollections of Yitzhak Rabin, and by his memories of his own vanished family. This is the magnificent finale of a historic memoir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This second volume in Wiesel's memoirs (the first was All Rivers Run to the Sea) is--as a memoir by this Jewish novelist, activist and Nobel Peace laureate must be--a moral accounting, of himself and of those he has known. And he spares no one, from Israeli U.N. ambassador Abba Eban to French president Fran ois Mitterrand, in an honest report on how he believes they have let him down. The tale resumes here with Wiesel's marriage in 1969, at the age of 40, and follows the author through his most active years as a goad to the world's memory (of the Holocaust) and conscience (in the realm of human rights, especially those of Soviet Jewry). The events are often dramatic: one of the book's climaxes comes in 1985, when it was announced that President Reagan would visit Bitburg, a German cemetery where SS members are buried, and Wiesel had to decide whether to receive from Reagan's hands the Congressional Gold Medal. Courageous as ever, he accepted the award--and used the occasion to speak truth to power, urging Reagan to change his plans for the trip. Wiesel is equally forthright about the political maneuvers and infighting that led him to resign from chairing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council before its task, building a museum, was even begun. Despite the failings of humanity, which he relates so well, he remains optimistic about the future. Wiesel's writing is as fluid and evocative as ever, and his storytelling skills turn the events of his own life into a powerful series of morality plays. No one who cares about ethical imperatives should miss this book. Photos not seen by PW.
