To reveal the full stature of man in the face of catastrophe, John Hersey has used a classical literary device—the rediscovery of lost records. For even though The Wall is ostensibly culled from "the Levinson Archive," it is a novel. Its substance is history, but its details are invented. It transmutes the record of vast tragic events into a great work of the imagination.  On the surface The Wall is the story of the systematic piecemeal extermination of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, and of the heroic resistance of defenseless men and women against the full brute force of the Germans. But the real story is the growth in spirit of a group of friends, so that they emerge undismayed and triumphant in the face of physical annihilation.  The Wall transcends all John Hersey's other work. It is without doubt one of the truly great novels of our generation.
-Alfred A. Knopf