Oprah's New Book Choice: Holocaust Memoir

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/17/2006 at 08:05 AM EST

Following the fallout from her last selection – author James Frey, who trumped up episodes in his memoir A Million Little Pieces – Oprah Winfrey has selected Elie Wiesel's Night, a Holocaust memoir, as her latest book club pick.

Wiesel, 77, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for a lifetime of writing and speaking against hatred, racism and genocide. Speaking on her show on Monday, which was Martin Luther King Day, the Winfrey said: "Like Dr. King, I have a dream of my own, too, that the powerful message of this little book would be engraved on every human heart and will never be forgotten again. That you who read this book will feel as I do that these 120 pages ... should be required reading for all humanity."

Night is Wiesel's account of his family's placement in the Auschwitz death camp and is the first of more than 40 books, essays and plays he has written. The book is marketed on some online bookstores as a novel, but Wiesel's foundation labels it a memoir, the Associated Press reports.

Winfrey also said Monday she plans to travel with Wiesel to Auschwitz next month, and her show will have a high school essay contest on Wiesel's book. Fifty winners will be flown to Chicago, where her show is based, for a taping with the author, Winfrey said.