Overview
From Elie Wiesel, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of our fiercest moral voices, a provocative and deeply thoughtful new novel about a life shaped by the worst horrors of the twentieth century and one man’s attempt to reclaim happiness.Doriel, a European expatriate living in New York, suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, survived World War II only to die in an accident, together with his father, soon after. Doriel was a child during the war, and his knowledge of the Holocaust is largely limited to what he finds in movies, newsreels, and books—but it is enough. Doriel’s parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him filled with longing but unable to experience the most basic joys in life. He plunges into an intense study of Judaism, but instead of finding solace, he comes to believe that he is possessed by a dybbuk.
Surrounded by ghosts, spurred on by demons, Doriel finally turns to Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt, a psychoanalyst who finds herself particularly intrigued by her patient. The two enter into an uneasy relationship based on exchange: of dreams, histories, and secrets. Despite Doriel’s initial resistance, Dr. Goldschmidt helps to bring him to a crossroads—and to a shocking denouement.
In Doriel’s journey into the darkest regions of the soul, Elie Wiesel has written one of his most profoundly moving works of fiction, grounded always by his unparalleled moral compass.
Synopsis
From the Nobel laureate, author of Night, a searing new novel about a man whose life is shaped by his changing grasp of the horrors of the twentieth century.
Doriel, a European orphan transplanted to New York, carries with him a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a resistance leader during World War II, survived the war but soon afterward died in a car crash with Doriel's father. His longing for his parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him unable to experience the most basic joys in life. A gifted psychoanalyst helps bring him to a crossroads: to a shocking discovery about his mother's life and his own birth, and to the understanding that even the most intimate of wounds can be healed.
From the Compact Disc edition.
The Washington Post - Donna Rifkind
The book's style and themes will be familiar to those acquainted with his previous fiction…yet A Mad Desire to Dance shows the sensibility of a literary wanderer who has not finished searching for answers to his original anguished questions…The novel's grim satisfactions lie in a sense of shared responsibility between teller and listener, a confidential yet far-reaching partnership that began four decades ago with Night.
Editorials
Donna Rifkind
The book's style and themes will be familiar to those acquainted with his previous fiction…yet A Mad Desire to Dance shows the sensibility of a literary wanderer who has not finished searching for answers to his original anguished questions…The novel's grim satisfactions lie in a sense of shared responsibility between teller and listener, a confidential yet far-reaching partnership that began four decades ago with Night.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Nobel laureate Wiesel (Night) grapples with questions of madness, sadness and memory in this difficult but powerful novel. Doriel Waldman, a Polish Jew born in 1936, survived the occupation in hiding with his father while his mother made a reputation for herself in the Polish resistance. But he did not escape tragedy: his two siblings were murdered and his parents died in an accident shortly after the war. At the novel's opening, he is 60 years old, miserable, alone and on the verge of insanity. Most of the novel unfolds in the office of Doriel's shrink, Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt, where he reveals himself to be an uncooperative patient, and his aggressive, obsessive rants on the origins of his troubles make for difficult reading. But Wiesel handles the situation expertly, and as Thérèse draws Doriel out, a multilayered narrative emerges: the journey through sadness and toward redemption; a meditation on the hand dealt to Holocaust survivors; and a valuable parable on the wages of human trauma. While the novel is not always easy sledding, there are ample rewards-intellectual and visceral-for the willing reader. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Doriel Waldman, a reclusive and scholarly European Jew living in New York City, has tried to block out the nightmarish events of the 20th century by retreating into the world of medieval Jewish history. He is a student of Jewish traditions and the Jewish community, but he is incapable of forming relationships. Now, at age 60, he is so lonely and depressed that he fears his soul has been stolen by a dybbuk. In desperation, he decides to try traditional psychoanalysis but proves to be an extremely difficult patient, arguing with his female therapist every step of the way, just as he has argued with God. He is especially reluctant to discuss his parents, who died in a car crash just after World War II. The therapy novel is a distinct genre, and Wiesel takes full advantage of the format by gradually revealing the important traumas in Doriel's life and illuminating them with extracts from the therapist's notebooks. Originally published in France, this dense and difficult novel expands on some of the provocative themes in Nobel Prize winner Wiesel's celebrated memoir, Night. For larger fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/1/08.]
—Edward B. St. John