Elie Wiesel’s 1968 book “A Beggar in Jerusalem” has been published in Italian ahead of the January 27 observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a report said.
The Italian-language version titled “Il Mendicante di Gerusalemme” was released by Edizioni Terrasanta, the ANSAmed news agency said.
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The book was scheduled to be presented on Tuesday at the Terrasanta bookshop in Milan, the report said.
The book was inspired by Wiesel’s 1967 visit to Jerusalem, especially the many people he met and saw at that time, the report said.
“I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory”, Wiesel said about the visit.
A synopsis of the book says, “This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present.
“Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem”, the synopsis says.
Wiesel was awarded France’s Prix Médicis for the book in 1968.
Wiesel, born in Romania in 1928, survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. The 1986 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a philosopher and writer as well as staunch defender of human rights, the report said.
