The Lost

Condition: BRAND NEW ISBN: 9780007550128 Author(s): Daniel Mendelsohn Format: Paperback Language: English Year: 2014 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pages: 688

Description: âA 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, âThe Lostâ is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully writtenâ Michael Chabon In this updated edition of Daniel Mendelsohnâs classic, riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic â part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work â that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.âThe Lostâ begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust â 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 tantalised by the fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relative's 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, âThe Lostâ transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal,