Oprah’s New Book
Recently burned by the less-than-completely truthful James Frey, Oprah has selected for her next book one that she foreshadowed by saying it should be mandatory reading for every person on earth. Big words. Is there any book that great? The one she picked, though, is hard to argue. It’s Night by Elie Wiesel, a book about the Holocaust that is both historic and humane.
There are other books that might be recommended so highly, but two in particular came to my mind: Beloved by Toni Morrison, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
For further reading related to Holocaust, I recommend a few other books. Art Spiegelman’s now-classic graphic novels Maus and Maus II, and Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose. The latter is a re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty myth interwoven with the Holocaust. It could so easily have been slight, or overdetermined, or both, but instead it is a powerfully moving interpretation that underscores how difficult truths can sometimes be better told in fiction than in non-. (A lesson that Frey might be aware of, now.)
Finally, for more Wiesel, I recommend reading The Town Beyond the Wall in conjunction with Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha–seemingly disparate, but very alike.