Point Books In Pursuance Of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
| Original Title: | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million |
| ISBN: | 0060542977 (ISBN13: 9780060542979) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Prix Médicis Etranger (2007), National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (2006), Βραβείο Λογοτεχνικής Μετάφρασης ΕΚΕΜΕΛ for Αγγλόφωνη Λογοτεχνία (2011), LIRE Meilleur Livre de l' Année (2007) |
Daniel Mendelsohn
Hardcover | Pages: 512 pages Rating: 4.08 | 5063 Users | 656 Reviews
Representaion Concering Books The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
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. *** Depuis qu’il est enfant, Daniel Mendelsohn sait que son grand-oncle Shmiel, sa femme et leurs quatre filles ont été tués, quelque part dans l’est de la Pologne, en 1941. Comment, quand, où exactement ? Nul ne peut lui en dire plus. Et puis il découvre ces lettres désespérées écrites en 1939 par Shmiel à son frère, installé en Amérique, des lettres pressant sa famille de les aider à partir, des lettres demeurées sans réponse... Parce qu’il a voulu savoir ce qui s’est passé, parce qu’il a voulu donner un visage à ces six disparus, Daniel Mendelsohn est parti sur leurs traces, rencontrant, année après année, des témoins épars dans une douzaine de pays. Cette quête, il en a fait un livre, puzzle vertigineux, roman policier haletant, plongée dans l’Histoire et l’oubli – un chef-d’œuvre. « Daniel Mendelsohn a écrit une œuvre puissamment émouvante sur le passé " ; perdu " ; d’une famille, qui rappelle à la fois l’opulence des œuvres en prose de Proust et les textes elliptiques de W.G. Sebald. Une réussite exceptionnelle. » Joyce Carol Oates « Les Disparus est une bouleversante enquête de détective à part entière, doublée d’un questionnement sur les interventions énigmatiques de Dieu dans les affaires humaines, et approfondie par une réflexion sur la part d’inéluctable et d’incompréhensible que le hasard introduit dans l’Histoire. » John Maxwell Cœtzee « Entre épopée et intimité, méditation et suspense, tragédie et hilarité, Les Disparus est un livre merveilleux. » Jonathan Safran Fœr « Mendelsohn réussit à assembler un tableau immensément humain dans lequel chaque témoin a un visage et chaque visage une histoire et un destin. » Elie Wiesel
Present Of Books The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
| Title | : | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million |
| Author | : | Daniel Mendelsohn |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 512 pages |
| Published | : | September 19th 2006 by Harper (first published 2006) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. History. World War II. Holocaust. Autobiography. Memoir. War. Biography |
Rating Of Books The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Ratings: 4.08 From 5063 Users | 656 ReviewsDiscuss Of Books The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
I've been meaning to read this book for a decade now, ever since it came out and my European history professor from college emailed me. "I highly recommend this book," he said, "if you think you can get through it. Don't push yourself; the book can wait. But it is THAT GOOD." He wasn't insinuating that I didn't have the ability to read the book, that the vocabulary would be too much for me to grasp or that I wouldn't be able to make it through six hundred pages. Instead, he was concerned about
Compelling story, but the writing..... was overwrought and needed incisive editing. Only the story, the mystery, and the need to know what lay at the end of the journey kept me reading.
Just arrived from France through BM.What happened to Shmiel Jäger, his wife Ester and their four beautiful girls? Emigrants to their relatives in America, they died at the beginning of the occupation of Galicia by the Germans denounced by their good Polish. Born in 1960, Daniel Mendelsohn, nephew of Shmiel has always doubted the official version, and from his childhood, began searching for the truth. This book is both the result 'of a life of inquiry, and the story of the investigation itself.
This book is sad and beautiful and riveting. The story itself isn't unusual since the fate of this family was the fate of many European Jews in the Holocaust. But the author pursues the story with such loving care, and the uncovering of what happened is handled almost unbearably well. I also enjoyed how the author wove in philology/etymology and biblical reference. I loved it. I cried all over it. I forced it on my mother.
A friend of mine gave me her copy of this book, telling me I should read it because of the intimacy my own life has had in recent years to the Holocaust. My boyfriend's grandparents were both Holocaust survivors who emigrated to the US after the war. The book focuses on one man's search to find out more about 'the lost,' six members of his family (an aunt, uncle, and four cousins) who perished in the war, but no one knows exactly how. He travels to multiple countries over several years
The two teenage girls at the right in the back row in this picture are my paternal grandmother and her sister. Their parents and grandfather are in the front row. The picture was taken around 1900. A few years later, my grandmother, rebellious and politically inclined, left the small town in Poland and came, alone, to the United States. She was one of the very few members of her family to escape the Holocaust. Like many American Jews, I don't know precisely what happened to my relatives. Daniel
0 Comments