The eighth day of creation
The eighth day of creation (OT: The Eighth Day ) is a novel by the American writer Thornton Wilder from 1967.
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The starting point of the novel is the murder of the mine manager Breckenridge Lansing. His co-worker and longtime friend John Ashley is mistakenly charged for the crime and sentenced to death. On the transport to prison after the verdict was announced, he managed to escape with the help of a mysterious gang of masked men. John Ashley fled to South America, never seeing his family again. In the following, the fate of the two families, that of the alleged perpetrator and that of the victim, is gradually rolled out from different perspectives over several generations. The narrator describes how it came about that the protagonists settled in the small mining town in southern Illinois , how they got to know each other and how they lived on after the murder, the children grew up and found their place in life. It's about the search for happiness and the meaning of life. At the very end of the novel, the murder is also solved.
Thornton Wilder received the National Book Award in 1968 for the novel published in the USA in 1967 .
The book was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for 19 weeks from May 6 to September 15, 1968 .