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Anita Diamant’s Day After Night opens in 1945, in a British detention camp in Palestine, where four very different women are thrown together after surviving the Holocaust. I’ll admit, I didn’t even know these holding camps for so-called “illegal immigrants” existed, so that piece of history immediately pulled me in.
Each woman carries her own kind of damage—physical, emotional, moral—and Diamant treats them as individuals, not symbols. This is very much a character study, focused on what happens after survival, when freedom turns out to be messy and complicated. The friendships feel tentative, sometimes prickly, sometimes deeply moving, and often shaped by what these women can’t say out loud.
The setting does a lot of the heavy lifting. From the detention camp to kibbutz life and the early tensions surrounding the future of Israel, the backdrop feels grounded and thoughtfully rendered. That said, the pacing lags in spots, and a few plot turns feel a bit too neat.
I found the novel interesting and worthwhile, though not quite as powerful as The Red Tent, which I’ve read twice and still love more. Even so, Day After Night is a reflective, humane novel about survival, friendship, and the long, uneven process of starting over.