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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Old Testament inThe Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters -- young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe -- in this intensely dramatic novel.Day After Nightis based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for "illegal" immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp with profoundly different stories. All of them survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to begin to hope, Shayndel, Leonie, Tedi, and Zorah find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.This is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption, a novel that reimagines a moment in history with such stunning eloquence that we are haunted and moved by every devastating detail.Day After Nightis a triumphant work of fiction.
Author Notes
Anita Diamant is the author of Saying Kaddish, Choosing a Jewish Life, The New Jewish Wedding, Living a Jewish Life, The New Jewish Baby Book, Bible Baby Names, and the bestselling novel, The Red Tent. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Diamant's bestseller, The Red Tent, explored the lives of biblical women ignored by the male-centric narrative. In her compulsively readable latest, she sketches the intertwined fates of several young women refugees at Atlit, a British-run internment camp set up in Palestine after WWII. There's Tedi, a Dutch girl who hid in a barn for years before being turned in and narrowly escaping Bergen-Belsen; Leonie, a beautiful French girl whose wartime years in Paris are cloaked with shame; Shayndel, a heroine of the Polish partisan movement whose cheerful facade hides a tortured soul; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor who is filled with an understandable nihilism. The dynamic of suffering and renewed hope through friendship is the book's primary draw, but an eventual escape attempt adds a dash of suspense to the astutely imagined story of life at the camp: the wary relationship between the Palestinian Jews and the survivors, the intense flirtation between the young people that marks a return to life. Diamant opens a window into a time of sadness, confusion and optimism that has resonance for so much that's both triumphant and troubling in modern Jewish history. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Atlit, an interment camp for illegal refugees near Haifa in what is now Israel (formally Palestine under British rule), is the setting for this engrossing and historically accurate novel by the author of The Red Tent. Here, Diamant gives voice to women who survived the Holocaust and seek freedom in Israel. Her story is narrated by four women with vastly different experiences: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a Dutch Jew who had been living in hiding; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. As their friendships develop and they struggle to create new lives, the women revisit past horrors of escaping the genocide. Verdict Tragedy and redemption are artfully paired in this stirring novel. Recommended for readers interested in modern Jewish Zionist history and fans of stirring rescue and human-interest stories. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/09.]-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.