Night - Elie Wiesel

This is the kind of book that knocks the wind out of you.  I saw it on the shelving cart and, knowing it is an important work, but having never read it, I started to read.  I couldn't put it down until I finished it, though, as the story swallows you whole.

Book cover from vivaciousbluesky.wordpress.com

The story leaves you feeling disoriented.  There is so much death - the physical deaths of Wiesel's family and friends, Wiesel's death of emotion, the death of humanity, God's death - that you feel like you yourself have been buried alive.  There is sadness, and shock, and dismay, and disbelief, and you feel distant from yourself and your life.  Hope is noticeably absent, even in the last sentences.  It is a supremely difficult story, amplified by the reality of it.