Elie Wiesel makes a number of challenging narrative and character turns in his novel, The Fifth Son. Saying too much about this would reveal the plot. But I can say that Weisel takes the narrative and moves it back and forth in time. He builds up suspense, a sense of unwinding knowledge, and impending action, layer by layer. There is also a surprising twist of character development toward the end that completely re-frames the novel.
Wiesel is rightly labeled a novelist who writes about the Holocaust. This is his almost exclusive theme. But The Fifth Son shows that he can take this theme and exploit it artistically in surprising ways.
