The Lost

When Daniel Mendelsohn was a child, the Holocaust was a topic never to be discussed. His family was haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during that time, a mystery that intrigued him for years. The Lost is the story of Mendelsohn’s search for his missing family members, a quest that took him to twelve countries on four continents, and forced him to confront the many discrepancies between the lives we live and the stories we tell. Deftly moving between past and present, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Suspenseful, deeply personal, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates what is lost, and found, through the passage of time. Daniel Mendelsohn is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and also writes for The New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Times Magazine. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Criticism and is the author of The Elusive Embrace. Mendelsohn holds the Charles Ranlett Flint Chair in Humanities at Bard College. He lives in New York City and Trenton, New Jersey. “Mendelsohn succeeds in assembling an immensely human tableau in which each witness has a face and each face a story and destiny.” — Elie Wiesel, Washington Post Book World 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.