The Testament

The Testament Synopsis

Paltiel Kossover, a "mute poet" and witness to history, travels from his Jewish childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia to Paris and Berlin in the 1930s as the Nazis take power, and Spain during its Civil War. On his journey he embraces communism only to return to Russia and be imprisoned. In his prison cell Paltiel writes his 'testament', a long letter to the son he will never see again, an account of his life as a man "who lived a Communist and died a Jew".

Encompassing Europe, and the history of the twentieth-century, Elie Wiesel pays tribute to the many writers killed by Stalin and in Paltiel he has created one of the great Everyman characters of contemporary literature. Elie Wiesel was born in Romania in 1928. As a child during World War Two he was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister died, and sent on to Buchenwald where his father died.

At the end of World War Two he moved to France and, eventually, to the USA. He is the author of over 60 books, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and has been awarded the Grand Cross in the French Legion of Honour. Souvenir Press revives Elie Wiesel's lost classic as part of its acclaimed Independent Voices series.