Night to LightMad Desire to Dance, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel's latest, starts once again in a pre-WWII Polish Village under ethnic siege and carries us all the way up to yesterday. There is no barbed wire or six-tiered bunk beds here. No jack boots on the neck either but rather the more unusual story of a dybbuk's psychoanalysis.
In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a malicious spirit that enters a living person (in this case one Doriel Waldman) and proceeds to make his life miserable. Waldman is desperate enough to seek out the help of psychiatrist Thérèse Goldschmidt. The story she records in her notes, one we are privy to read, is of Waldman's resurrection as a man, albeit an old man. The twist at the end of the novel is not only interesting but quietly promising.
Mad Desire to Dance is not a walk in the park read but neither is Night, Wiesel's memoir and arguably most famous, most read book. Reading either or both books – about the difficulty of remembering or forgetting – is well worth your time.
Post by Phil Carr
