La Nuit.

WIESEL, Elie; Preface by Francois Mauriac.

Item Number: 5684

Paris: Les Editions De Minuit, 1958.

First French edition (preceding the first English Edition) of the author’s classic first work. Octavo, original wrappers. Signed by Elie Wiesel on the half title page. A few notes in the text from a Buchenwald survivor, a very good example with some light wear to the extremities. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Rare.

"If only I could get rid of this dead weight. Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever" wrote Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel in reference to his dying father. Night relays Wiesel's experience as a prisoner in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-1945. Wiesel witnessed the inversion of convention and destruction of values. He writes, "here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends everyone lives and dies for himself alone." "To the best of my knowledge no one has left behind him so moving a record" (Alfred Kazin).