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    The Sonderberg Case
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    The Sonderberg Case
    Unavailable
    The Sonderberg Case
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Sonderberg Case

    Written by Elie Wiesel

    Narrated by Mark Bramhall

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the Nobel laureate and author of the masterly Night, a deeply felt, beautifully written novel of morality, guilt, and innocence.

    Despite personal success, Yedidyah—a theater critic in New York City, husband to a stage actress, father to two sons—finds himself increasingly drawn to the past. As he reflects on his life and the decisions he's made, he longingly reminisces about the relationships he once had with the men in his family (his father, his uncle, his grandfather) and the questions that remain unanswered. It's a feeling that is further complicated when Yedidyah is assigned to cover the murder trial of a German expatriate named Werner Sonderberg. Sonderberg returned alone from a walk in the Adirondacks with an elderly uncle, whose lifeless body was soon retrieved from the woods. His plea is enigmatic: "Guilty . . . and not guilty."

    These words strike a chord in Yedidyah, plunging him into feelings that bring him harrowingly close to madness. As Sonderberg's trial moves along a path of dizzying yet revelatory twists and turns, Yedidyah begins to understand his own family's hidden past and finally liberates himself from the shadow it has cast over his life.

    With his signature elegance and thoughtfulness, Elie Wiesel has given us an enthralling psychological mystery, both vividly dramatic and profoundly emotional.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 24, 2010
    ISBN9780307734648
    Unavailable
    The Sonderberg Case
    Author

    Elie Wiesel

    Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 in the town of Sighet, now part of Romania. During World War II, he, with his family and other Jews from the area, were deported to the German concentration camps, where his parents and younger sister perished. Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. Liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 by advancing Allied troops, he was taken to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a journalist. In 1958, he published his first book, La Nuit, a memoir of his experiences in the concentration camps. He has since authored nearly thirty books, some of which use these events as their basic material. In his many lectures, Wiesel has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered persecution and death because of their religion, race or national origin. He has been outspoken on the plight of Soviet Jewry, on Ethiopian Jewry and on behalf of the State of Israel today. Wiesel made his home in New York City, and became a United States citizen. He was a visiting scholar at Yale University, a Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the City College of New York, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University where he taught 'Literature of Memory.' Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 1980 - 1986, Wiesel served on numerous boards of trustees and advisors. He died in 2016.

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    Reviews for The Sonderberg Case

    3.5/5

    27 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I've always loved Elie Wiesel (as both an author and the person himself), and often think about the things he's gone through (living through the Holocaust), especially as it relates to the WAY he writes his fiction. This particular novel could probably fall better on the three star spectrum, but given Elie, and I think the overall place this novel would have in his writings, I give it a four. I think there is much to analyze about Elie himself through this novel. Especially in relation himself to that of Judaism, the Holocaust, to Germans, to self-guilt (or survivor's guilt), and a large part of trying to.... forgive; namely forgive those who did things to the Jews, to those who didn't do ENOUGH (or anything) to protect the Jews, etc. There is a lot to this (relatively short) novel, but I find it more fascinating as an unpacking of Elie himself, especially once the reveal comes in that the journalist was adopted, and how he survived the war and getting whisked away and saved by a woman who was then degraded for doing so (an unmarried servant woman pretending he was her bastard son; the town/village assuming she's a harlot/slut and calling her names and degrading her for the rest of her life).

      The overall plot of the novel is pretty paper thin. More a biography of the main character - the journalist, with some small disposition on the court trial itself, which is pretty small, and really not much of a plot. (Similar to his Hostages, which I recently read, where its akin to that, paper-thin plot but a long biography of a character and a breaking down of their psyche). The trial more or less comes across as secondary, especially once its revealed its a shut-case that Werner Sonderberg is innocent (despite saying he was "guilty and not guilty"). The ending chapters of the novel are great for both their prose and word-usage, and the way it really gets to the survivor of the character, to how Elie views himself as a survivor, and how Jews view their religion/people as ALL being survivors, and ALL needing to forgive and move on.
    • 1/5
      I have the utmost respect and admiration for Elie Wiesel. I do. And I'm embarrassed to say that up until now, I've never read any of his books. Not even Night.

      (Although, my embarrassment on not reading Night is probably not as great as the embarrassment of a certain former college president of my alma mater who, upon introducing Mr. Wiesel as a keynote speaker during an event, REFERRED TO WIESEL'S BOOK NIGHT AS A WORK OF FICTION! I kid you not. Mr. Wiesel himself kindly but firmly set this dingbat straight.)

      I digress. But that is an unbelievable story, is it not? I mean, can you imagine? I'm not much of a fan of this woman, truth be told.

      Anyway, so I had high expectations going into The Sonderberg Case. This short novel is the story of Yedidyah Wasserman, a drama critic living in New York City with his actress wife and two sons. Because of his theatrical background, Yedidyah is assigned by the newspaper for which to cover the trial of one Werner Sonderberg, who is accused of killing his (Werner's) uncle. Werner pleads "guilty and not guilty," setting in motion a series of courtroom scenarios captured by Yedidyah, to much acclaim.

      (I was picturing Yedidyah as somewhat of a Dominick Dunne, man-about-town type of character.)

      For the first part of the novel, there are passages of writing that were fluid and poetic, almost causing me to slow down and take in the prose. But then it seemed as if the plot became too heavy for what is a less than 200 page novel. In that span, Wiesel gives his reader the Sonderberg trial and the effect it has on Yedidyah personally, as well as on his marriage. He presents some unspoken business of Yedidyah's family history, their experiences and fate during the Holocaust, and the dynamics between Werner and the uncle. There's also the mention of something medically wrong with Yedidyah, which I'm thinking is cancer but we never quite figure out.

      It's all a little hard to keep straight. (Oh, and through all of this, the narration changes (often) from first to third person, and back again.) It makes for a choppy story. Perhaps this is because the novel was translated from the French. (If so, this is the second translation from the French I've had difficulty with - the first being The Elegance of the Hedgehog.)

      (Cringes and shudders at the memory of that particular book.)

      I wanted to like this one more than I did, but The Sonderberg Case failed to win my favor. However, it won't deter me from giving Wiesel another chance by reading more of his work - fiction AND nonfiction - in the future.
    • 4/5
      A New York theater critic, ill and depressed, is asked to review a sensational murder trial of a young German visitor to NY who allegedly killed his elderly uncle while vacationing. Yedidyah has always had a keen sense of passion and sensitivity, and loves his family deeply. He has deep connections with his wise and loving grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, his uncle, his wife and sons. It is his past that has come to trouble Yedidyah. He knows he actually had been adopted by this family; his birth parents, and older brother had been killed by the Nazis. He had been saved by Maria, a non-Jewish family employee, sent to America, where he finds a good home with a loving, thoughtful and educated family. He dreams about and misses his young parents, and brother. He goes to Europe and finds Maria, who is too frail and sick with heartbreak to understand the significance of the visit. Yedidyah feels he is too late; he experiences intense guilt that it has taken him so long to miss his family. Ironically, it is meeting Werner Sonderberg, the German suspect in the trial Yedidyah reviewed, that help him understand. The love he has received in abundance from both his biological and adoptive families is the antidote to his malaise, and the only substantive response to the evil of the Holocaust. This novel is very philosophical, and filled with so much wisdom and compassion.