"For more than three decades Elie Wiesel and Jack Kolbert have maintained a warm, friendly relationship. The two first met at the University of New Mexico where Kolbert introduced Wiesel to a capacity audience during an annual public lecture series. During the last several years Kolbert has escorted his seminar classes of honor students to Wiesel's Manhattan home where these students enjoyed face-to-face discussions about the issues that have engaged him throughout his career. Out of Kolbert's numerous encounters with Wiesel in both America and France, and out of his intensive study of Wiesel's dozens of books and hundreds of articles, Kolbert has written a work in which he identifies a number of interconnected themes that together form the keystone of the writer's career, literary art, and his philosophy of life. Kolbert's discussions of these themes constitute the essential substance of this volume."--Jacket.