num_pages: 296
description: When a Christian boy disappears in a fictional Eastern European town in the 1920s, the local Jews are quickly accused of ritual murder. There is tension in the air. A pogrom threatens to erupt. Suddenly, an extraordinary man—Moshe the dreamer, a madman and mystic—steps forward &amp; confesses to a crime he didn't commit, in a vain attempt to save his people from certain death. The community gathers to hear his last words—a plea for silence—&amp; everyone present takes an oath: whoever survives the impending tragedy must never speak of the town’s last days &amp; nights of terror. For fifty years the sole survivor keeps his oath—until he meets a man whose life depends on hearing the story, &amp; one man’s loyalty to the dead confronts head-on another’s reason to go on living. One of Wiesel’s strongest early novels, this timeless parable about the Jews &amp; their enemies, about hate, family, friendship &amp; silence, is as powerful, haunting &amp; significant as it was when first published.
language: English
title: The Oath
titlecomplete: The Oath
genres: Judaism, Religion, Jewish, Holocaust, War, Novels, Judaica, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 290
places: Hungary
publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group