Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
This book is a diary-memoir written on the occasion of the author's return with her family to her native country, Romania, in 1975. It is a different world than when she left. The end of the Cold War seems to have persuaded some that the ideas of classical liberalism had won, that history had somehow come to an end, that freedom had proven its superiority beyond argument. Yet this is hardly the case: throughout the former Soviet empire the specters of nationalism, xenophobia, and statism loom large. They are present in the West as well, in different forms yet no less dangerous. So the message of Pilon's book which is predicated on the value of individual freedom continues to be relevant, and worth restating. Originally published in 1979 by Regnery Gateway, Inc.Synopsis
Notes from the Other Side of Night is a diary-memoir written upon Juliana Geran Pilon's return to her native Romania in 1975, which she had left along with her family when she was just fourteen. Poetically weaving together modern insight and realities with childhood perceptions, Pilon tells the haunting stories of her parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends.
Although the scenery of her native home had remained essentially unchanged since her childhood, Pilon recalls streets that are no more, homes and churches that have been demolished. Yet, the hills and forests, the flowers and mountains, the heat of old Bucharest, remained the same. The scenes and characters described in this book are simply unforgettable.
Despite the many tragedies it describes--anti-semitism, political imprisonment, and judicial execution were ruthless realities under communism--Notes from the Other Side of Night is not a depressing book. Pilon writes with a detached melancholy about events and characters that illustrate Hannah Arendt's terrifying "banality of evil." But she remembers, as well, those few who managed to remain human beings until the end. Ultimately, hope triumphs in this memoir. This edition includes a new foreword, which discusses the initial writing and publication of this and previous editions.