The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million [9780061491801]

Overview

Soon to be featured in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, premiering on PBS September 18^th

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.

What does it take to reclaim a family’s history from the ashes of the Holocaust?

• Scholarly Detective Work: A quest across a dozen countries on four continents to find the last eyewitnesses to his family’s fate, spurred by the discovery of desperate letters from 1939.
• A Ukrainian Shtetl: A vivid reconstruction of life in Bolechow, the small Ukrainian town where the author’s family lived for centuries, and where the answers to their disappearance lie.
• A Profound Family Saga: The search for six relatives lost in the Holocaust becomes a universal meditation on memory, history, and the stories families tell—and the secrets they keep.
• Literary Narrative Nonfiction: Deftly weaving personal memoir, investigative reporting, and brilliant ruminations on biblical texts, creating a literary tour de force that is both gripping and deeply moving.