A Beggar in Jerusalem: A novel

A Beggar in Jerusalem: A novel

When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory." This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem. "One of the rare books: a spiritual adventure so profound that it demands to be judged in terms of world literature." — The Washington Post "Very remarkable, indeed, outstanding." — The New York Times Book Review "Perhaps the first major novel to bring to bear on the destiny of the Jew all the resources of modern European literary experience combined with the storytelling techniques of the Hasidic masters." —The  Washington Post Book World When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory." This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem. When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory." This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem. ELIE WIESEL  was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The author of more than fifty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University for forty years. Wiesel died in 2016. I   The tale the beggar tells must be told from the beginning. But the beginning has its own tale, its own secret. That’s how it is, and that’s how it has always been. There is nothing man can do about it. Death itself has no power over the beginning. The beggar who tells you this knows what he is talking about.   Do you see him? There. Sitting on a tree stump, huddled in the shadows, as though in wait for someone, he scrutinized those who come his way, intending perhaps to provoke them or unmask them. Don’t ask him, he won’t answer: he hates answers.   Yet who is it he is looking for in the crowd? A hunted accomplice, an adversary long forgotten? Does he himself know? Could it be Katriel, after all? Katriel: a wound more recent, a ghost more persistent than the others. Oh no, the beggar is not through with Katriel! Not yet! His denials are worthless, he is the first to say so. But he cannot be pushed. Not now, not ever. You must be patient. Everything in its own time. Dead or alive, Katriel will claim his place in this tale. After the last intruder has left the last of his victims. You’ll see.   Meanwhile don’t be afraid to come closer. The beggar will do you no harm, he will cast no spell over you. Do come nearer.   Do his eyes disturb you? They are not his, and he doesn’t know it. His lips? They move—yes—as though repeating tales heard or lived a day before, a century before: he no longer remembers. For him, you see, time has no meaning.   Perhaps then this is the moment to warn you: if he seems strange, it is because he is possessed by a strange memory, which holds pictures and words, all kinds of pictures, all kinds of words, even those belonging to others. He remembers events but not when they happened, nor to whom. He thinks he was there when and where they occurred: he thinks all tales began with him. As for the war, he knows it’s all over, but he doesn’t know whi