When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I
went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the
present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to
Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes
and ears, and above all, his memory." This haunting novel
takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust
survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the
Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate
there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of
his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and
mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on
a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to
Jerusalem.
