Daniel Mendelsohn
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 epicâ€”part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective workâ€”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 Holocaustâ€”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 quâ€™il est enfant, Daniel Mendelsohn sait que son grand-oncle Shmiel, sa femme et leurs quatre filles ont Ã©tÃ© tuÃ©s, quelque part dans lâ€™est de la Pologne, en 1941. Comment, quand, oÃ¹ exactement ? Nul ne peut lui en dire plus. Et puis il dÃ©couvre ces lettres dÃ©sespÃ©rÃ©es Ã©crites en 1939 par Shmiel Ã  son frÃ¨re, installÃ© en AmÃ©rique, des lettres pressant sa famille de les aider Ã  partir, des lettres demeurÃ©es sans rÃ©ponse... Parce quâ€™il a voulu savoir ce qui sâ€™est passÃ©, parce quâ€™il a voulu donner un visage Ã  ces six disparus, Daniel Mendelsohn est parti sur leurs traces, rencontrant, annÃ©e aprÃ¨s annÃ©e, des tÃ©moins Ã©pars dans une douzaine de pays. Cette quÃªte, il en a fait un livre, puzzle vertigineux, roman policier haletant, plongÃ©e dans lâ€™Histoire et lâ€™oubli â€“ un chef-dâ€™Å“uvre. ,Â« Daniel Mendelsohn a Ã©crit une Å“uvre puissamment Ã©mouvante sur le passÃ© " ; perdu " ; dâ€™une famille, qui rappelle Ã  la fois lâ€™opulence des Å“uvres en prose de Proust et les textes elliptiques de W.G. Sebald. Une rÃ©ussite exceptionnelle. Â» Joyce Carol Oates ,Â« Les Disparus est une bouleversante enquÃªte de dÃ©tective Ã  part entiÃ¨re, doublÃ©e dâ€™un questionnement sur les interventions Ã©nigmatiques de Dieu dans les affaires humaines, et approfondie par une rÃ©flexion sur la part dâ€™inÃ©luctable et dâ€™incomprÃ©hensible que le hasard introduit dans lâ€™Histoire. Â» John Maxwell CÅ“tzee ,Â« Entre Ã©popÃ©e et intimitÃ©, mÃ©ditation et suspense, tragÃ©die et hilaritÃ©, Les Disparus est un livre merveilleux. Â» Jonathan Safran FÅ“r Â« Mendelsohn rÃ©ussit Ã  assembler un tableau immensÃ©ment humain dans lequel chaque tÃ©moin a un visage et chaque visage une histoire et un destin. Â» Elie Wiesel
Nonfiction,History,World War II,Holocaust,Autobiography,Memoir,War,World War II,Biography,Literature,Jewish,War,Historical,Biography Memoir
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million