Paltiel Kossover, a "mute poet" and witness to history, travels from his Jewish childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia to Paris and Berlin in the 1930's as the Nazis take power and Spain during its Civil War. On his journey he embraces communism only to return to Russia to 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.
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