Elisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel's ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative. Caught between the manifold horrors of the past and the troubling dilemmas of the present, Elisha wrestles with guilt, ghosts, and ultimately God as he waits for the appointed hour and his act of assassination. Dawn is an eloquent meditation on the compromises, justifications, and sacrifices that human beings make when they murder other human beings.
I felt a bit misled by Goodreads when I picked this book up to read. It is listed as #2 in The Night Trilogy and after reading Night I just had to read the so called second book in the trilogy. It is not a direct second book of a trilogy. I am not even sure if it is Fiction or Non-Fiction (like Night).
That aside, it is another example from this author where less is more. 102 pages that again you read through hardly taking a breath.
The story itself does really make you think about the futility of war and quite angry with the resistance behind trying to set up a new Israel. A lot of killing went on in the name of their beliefs and while, one should stand up for ones beliefs, it seems rather a double standard. On the one hand criticising others for killing in the name of their beliefs while doing so yourself! A very deep matter of debate that I won't get into in this review.
Beautifully and simply written.
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