In this, his second novel, Hersey's characters are much more complexly human than in A Bellfor Adano (1944; see separate entry). They are also more alien to his experience. The Jews forced behind the wall of the Ghetto at first constitute what Noach Levinson, their historian, calls "a small France." They are divided into innumerable splinter groups from far left to ultraconservative. They are highly diversified in their working histories, too, from day laborers to professional men and university professors.

Some rarely, if ever, practice their religion; others are fanatically devout.

Noach Levinson's is the voice heard constantly throughout the novel. He had published two books before coming to the Ghetto, and he now takes any conversation, anecdote, any scrap of information he can find to make his record complete. Small, homely with thick glasses, there is something about him that causes people to talk freely and respond to...