The Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million (P.S.) - Softcover

Mendelsohn, Lecturer In The Department Of Classics Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062277774 ISBN 13: 9780062277770

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2013

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book - Winner of the National Jewish Book Award - Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award - A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist

"A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written." -- Michael Chabon

In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic--part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work--that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.

The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust--an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.

Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.

About this title

Review:

"A beautiful book, beautifully written."--Michael Chabon

"Hugely ambitious yet intensely engaging. . . . Absorbing, novelistic. . . . Thought-provoking and original."--Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Times Book Review (front cover)

"A grand book, an ambitious undertaking fully realized."--The Forward

"A magnificent and deeply wise book. . . . Mesmerizing. . . . Mendelsohn's accomplishment is enormous."--The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A stunning achievement. . . . Extraordinary."--Rebecca Goldstein, The New York Observer

"Stunning. . . . A singular achievement, a work of major significance and pummeling impact."--Samuel G. Freedman, The Chicago Tribune

"The Lost is a sensitively written book that constantly asks itself the most difficult questions about history and memory."--BookForum

"Mendelsohn, a classicist, creates a stunning Odyssey here, an epic world-wandering."--Garry Wills

"A stirring detective work, The Lost is ... deepened by reflections on the inescapable part that chance plays in history."--J. M. Coetzee

"Epic and personal, meditative and suspenseful, tragic and at times hilarious, The Lost is a wonderful book."--Jonathan Safran Foer

From the Back Cover:

In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic--part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work--that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0062277774
• ISBN 13: 9780062277770
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688