The author of the classic Holocaust memoir Night, Elie Wiesel continues to probe the conscience of his readers with The Judges, a novel that examines how we interpret, rationalize and justify our lives — a relevant subject post-Sept. 11. Wiesel's own great cause for reflection — his survival of the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald and Gleiwitz — has spawned more than 40 books, mostly nonfiction.
The Judges is not exactly a departure for the author: it just takes his usual fight for the human soul to a new playing field. This story is largely set in the parlor of a Connecticut country home (as opposed to concentration camps).
A demented host called the Judge takes into his home five richly diverse passengers from a plane, headed from New York to Tel Aviv and thrown together by chance when a snowstorm forces the pilot to make an emergency landing. The dialogue that transpires throughout the tale's one long night is a weighty ethical debate that requires the characters to consider their own self worth.
Verisimilitude takes a backseat to existentialism, but ultimately the novel decides little and answers only a few of the questions readers may ask about the characters.
An apt comparison is to Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The astronomer's scientific masterpiece laid out his argument for the heliocentric solar system through a conversation among three men: a committed Copernican, a defender of the Ptolemaic (geocentric) theory and an open-minded gentleman initially neutral to either theory.
With The Judges, Wiesel has constructed a story that allows him to examine the hearts and minds of people confronted with life, death, guilt, fault and the memory of these things. But as with Copernicus, Wiesel's personal stance on the issue put forth presents no mystery.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner is a humanitarian through and through. His storytelling, however — at least in the case of this novel — could be more deft.—Cooper Cruz
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2002.