In characterizing the focus of his work, Wiesel is perhaps his most dogged critic. Unwilling to laud himself as a touchstone of modern documentary journalism and a prime mover in the establishment of Holocaust lore as a unique wing of twentieth-century literature, he thinks of himself as a modest witness rather than moralist, theologian, or sage. In One Generation After, he accounts for his method and purpose: "I write in order to understand as much as to be understood." The most prominent of his early writings — the impressionistic trilogy composed of Night, Dawn (1961), and The Accident (1962) — reports Third Reich savagery with a controlled passion. Fifteen years after the fall of concentration camps, he battled repeated rejections before publishing in 1960 with Hill & Wang the first English version of the trio, translated by Stella Rodway.
In the canon of war literature, Night holds a unique position among works that differentiate between the challenge to the warrior and the sufferings of the noncombatant. A terse, merciless testimonial, the book serves as an austere reflection on war that has been characterized as "pure as a police report." Some analysts view the work as allegory in its depiction of the devastating effect of evil on innocence; critic Lawrence Cunningham labels the work a "thanatography."
Although Night earned the author a pro forma advance of only $100 and sold only 1,046 copies its first eighteen months, three and a half decades later, Night has achieved the status of a nonfiction classic. Alongside Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place, and Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List, Wiesel's memoir forms one of the cornerstones of Holocaust reportage.
