Elie Wiesel has died. He (pictured, via) was 87 years old.
TIME reports that Wiesel was well-known as an author, an activist, a Holocaust survivor, and the 1986 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout his writing career, he created novels, essays, articles, plays, and cantatas. Many would consider his most highly-regarded book to be the 1960 bestseller, Night.
Here’s more from The New York Times: “Mr. Wiesel first gained attention in 1960 with the English translation of Night, his autobiographical account of the horrors he witnessed in the camps as a 15-year-old boy. He wrote of how he had been plagued by guilt for having survived while millions died, and tormented by doubts about a God who would allow such slaughter…While many of his books were nominally about topics like Soviet Jewry or Hasidic masters, they all dealt with profound questions resonating out of the Holocaust: What is the sense of living in a universe that tolerates unimaginable cruelty? How could the world have been mute? How can one go on believing? Mr. Wiesel asked the questions in spare prose and without raising his voice; he rarely offered answers.” (via NPR)