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Title details for The Sonderberg Case by Elie Wiesel - Available

The Sonderberg Case

by Elie Wiesel
Catherine Temerson
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
From the Nobel laureate and author of the masterly Night, a deeply felt, beautifully written novel of morality, guilt, and innocence.
Despite personal success, Yedidyah—a theater critic in New York City, husband to a stage actress, father to two sons—finds himself increasingly drawn to the past. As he reflects on his life and the decisions he’s made, he longingly reminisces about the relationships he once had with the men in his family (his father, his uncle, his grandfather) and the questions that remain unanswered. It’s a feeling that is further complicated when Yedidyah is assigned to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate named Werner Sonderberg. Sonderberg returned alone from a walk in the Adirondacks with an elderly uncle, whose lifeless body was soon retrieved from the woods. His plea is enigmatic: “Guilty . . . and not guilty.”
These words strike a chord in Yedidyah, plunging him into feelings that bring him harrowingly close to madness. As Sonderberg’s trial moves along a path of dizzying yet revelatory twists and turns, Yedidyah begins to understand his own family’s hidden past and finally liberates himself from the shadow it has cast over his life.
With his signature elegance and thoughtfulness, Elie Wiesel has given us an enthralling psychological mystery, both vividly dramatic and profoundly emotional.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 24, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780307734662
      • File size: 142568 KB
      • Duration: 04:57:00

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Mark Bramhall's warm, textured voice is a perfect vehicle for this spare, if flawed, meditation on guilt and innocence, parenthood, and the sins of fathers and sons. The technical challenges include Yiddish, German, and various "New Yawk" accents; Bramhall is completely at ease with these. The emotional challenge is something else--conveying the anguish of journalist Yedidyah as he covers the murder trial of a young German, Werner Sonderberg, who pleads "Guilty, and Not Guilty" in the death of his elderly relative. Yedidyah comes to understand that his own life has been more shattered than he ever knew by the tragedy that befell European Jewry during the Holocaust. As Yedidyah pursues the truth about Sonderberg's case and his own, Bramhall's sensitive, focused performance serves the text respectfully, and shines. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 14, 2010
      Wiesel (Night) returns to the moral questions that characterize the post-WWII generation in this slim novel that is both overstuffed with plot and skimpy on motive. Yedidyah Wasserman, a well-regarded theater critic in New York City, is split between his parents' generation of Holocaust survivors and that of his sons, young American men who have chosen to move to Israel. Yedidyah imagines himself in the comfortable middle until he is called upon to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate. He is enthusiastic, but the trial is an unsettling opportunity for him to search the past and his family history, and also inexplicably angers his wife, Alika, a stage actress. The novel is told mostly via Yedidyah's personal reflections and each component of the story is so divorced from the next—there are no scenes, for instance, that show Yedidyah with more than one family member at a time—that it's difficult to assemble a larger view of his life. The ambitious scope of the story, spanning generations, is compelling, but limited by the novel's length.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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