Long Summer Nights

· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Neil Hellegers
Audiobook
5 hr 47 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 34 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

The second and last children's book by the extraordinary Holocaust survivor and Hebrew-language author of the award-winning Adam & Thomas.



A mystical and transcendent journey of two wanderers, an eleven-year-old boy and an old man to whom the boy has been entrusted by his father, a Jew, fleeing the ravages of the war by the late award winning author, Aharon Appelfeld. The old man is a former Ukrainian commander, revered by the soldiers under his command, who has gone blind and chosen the life of a wanderer as his last spiritual adventure. The child, now disguised as a Ukrainian non-Jew, learns from the old man how to fend for himself and how to care for others. In the tradition of The Alchemist, the travelers learn from each other and the boy grows stronger and wiser as the old man teaches him the art of survival and, through the stories he shares, the reasons for living. Long Summer Nights carries its magic not only in the words, but also in the silences between them.

About the author

Aharon Appelfeld was born in a town near Czernowitz, Romania on February 16, 1932. When he was 8 years old, he and his father endured a forced march to a labor camp in Ukraine. He escaped the camp and spent the next three years as a shepherd working for various peasants and always concealing his Jewish identity. He then joined the Soviet Army as a cook's helper. After World War II, he spent months in a refugee camp in Italy before going to Palestine in 1946. He worked on a kibbutz, fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and studied philosophy at Hebrew University. The Holocaust was the main subject of his books. His first novel, The Skin and the Gown, was published in 1971. His other works include Badenheim 1939, The Age of Wonders, To the Land of the Cattails, The Healer, The Immortal Bartfuss, For Every Sin, and Writing and the Holocaust. He received the Israel Prize for literature, The Prime Minister's Prize for Creative Writing, and two Anne Frank Literary Prizes. He taught Hebrew literature for many years at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba. He died on January 4, 2018 at the age of 85.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.