A Mad Desire to Dance

From the Nobel laureate, author of Night - the recently republished classic memoir of the Holocaust - 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. Doriel was a very young child during the war, and what he knows of the Holocaust comes from movies, newsreels, and books. But it is enough. His longing for his parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him unable to experience the most basic joys in life. In his search for solace, he plunges into an intense study of Judaism, but instead comes to believe he is possessed by a dybbuk. 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.

In the story of Doriel's journey into the darkest interior of the soul and back, we have one of Elie Wiesel's most profoundly moving works of fiction.


Genre: Historical