Book - BookDetective

Name: The Oath

Author: Elie Wiesel
Year: 1970
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Genres/categories:
Fiction, Historical fiction

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ISBNs:
9780805208085
0805208089

When a Christian boy disappears in a fictional Eastern European town in the 1920s, the local Jews are quickly accused of ritual murder. There is tension in the air. A pogrom threatens to erupt. Suddenly, an extraordinary man-Moshe the dreamer, a madman and mystic-steps forward & confesses to a crime he didn't commit, in a vain attempt to save his people from certain death. The community gathers to hear his last words-a plea for silence-and everyone present takes an oath: whoever survives the impending tragedy must never speak of the town's last days and nights of terror. For fifty years the sole survivor keeps his oath-until he meets a man whose life depends on hearing the story, & one man's loyalty to the dead confronts head-on another's reason to go on living.
One of Wiesel's strongest early novels, this timeless parable about the Jews and their enemies, about hate, family, friendship & silence, is as powerful, haunting & significant as it was when first published.