In this "powerful" (New York Times Book review) collection of personal essays and landmark speeches by "one of the great writers of our generation" (New Republic), Elie Wiesel weaves together reminiscences of his life before the Holocaust, his struggle to find meaning afterward, and the actions he has taken on behalf of others that have defined him as a leading advocate of humanity and have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Here, too, as a tribute to the dead and an exhortation to the living are landmark speeches, among them his powerful testimony at the Klaus Barbie trial, his impassioned plea to President Reagan not to visit a German S.S. cemetery, and the speech he gave in Oslo in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, in which he voices his hope that "the memory of evil will serve as a shield against evil."

Preface • 9
Why I Write • 13
To Believe or Not to Believe • 23
Inside a Library • 37
The Stranger in the Bible • 49
A Celebration of Friendship • 75
Peretz Markish • 87
Dialogues • 95
Pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Night • 105
Sighet Again • 123
Kaddish in Cambodia • 131
Making the Ghosts Speak • 135
Passover • 147
Meeting Again • 155
Trivializing Memory • 165
Bitburg • 173
Testimony at the Barbie Trial • 179
When Memory Brings People Together • 191
More Dialogues • 203
What Really Makes Us Free? • 219
Are We Afraid of Peace? • 225
The Nobel Address • 231
The Nobel Lecture • 237