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

Daniel Mendelsohn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost is the deeply personal account of a search for one family among his larger family, the one barely spoken of, only to say they were "killed by the Nazis." Mendelsohn, even as a boy, was always the one interested in his family's history, but when he came upon a set of letters from his great uncle Schmiel, pleading for help from his American relatives as the Nazi grip on the lives of Jews in their Polish town became tighter and tighter, he set out to find what had happened to that lost family. The result is both memoir and history, an ambitious and gorgeously meditative detective story that takes him across the globe in search of the lost threads of these few almost forgotten lives.

A whole culture lies behind the story Mendelsohn tells, and a lifetime of reading as well. For our Grownup School feature, he has given us a tour of some of the books behind his own, in a list he calls 10 Great Novels of Family History, the Holocaust, New York Jewish Life (And Other Things That Helped Me Write My Book). And you can watch his own moving introduction to the book in this short video:

Watch Daniel Mendelsohn introduce The Lost: high bandwidth or low bandwidth

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. As a boy in the 1960s, Mendelsohn could make elderly relatives cry just by entering the room, so much did he resemble his great-uncle Shmiel Jäger, who had been "killed by the Nazis." This short phrase was all Mendelsohn knew of his maternal grandfather Abraham's brother, who had remained with his wife and four daughters in the Ukrainian shtetl of Bolechow after Abraham left for America. Long obsessed with family history, Mendelsohn (The Elusive Embrace) embarked in 2001 on a series of journeys to learn exactly what had happened to Shmiel and his family. The result is a rich, ruminative "mythic narrative... about closeness and distance, intimacy and violence, love and death." Mendelsohn uses these words to describe the biblical story of Cain and Abel, for one of the book's most striking elements is the author's recounting of the book of Genesis in parallel with his own story, highlighting eternal themes of origins and family, temptation and exile, brotherly betrayal, creation and annihilation. In Ukraine, Australia, Israel and Scandinavia, Mendelsohn locates a handful of extraordinary, aged Bolechow survivors. Especially poignant is his relationship with novelist Louis Begley's 90-year-old mother, from a town near the shtetl, an irascible, scene-stealing woman who eagerly follows Mendelsohn's remarkable effort to retrieve her lost world. B&w photos, maps. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060542993
• ISBN-13: 978-0060542993
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (122 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > History > Europe > Ukraine

More About the Author

Daniel Mendelsohn was born on Long Island in 1960 and was educated at the University of Virginia and at Princeton, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. After completing his Ph.D. in Classics in 1994, he began a career in journalism in New York City, and since then his articles, essays, reviews and translations have appeared frequently in numerous national publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Review of Books, and Travel + Leisure, where he is a contributing editor. From 2000 until 2002, he was the weekly book critic for New York magazine, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Criticism. Mr. Mendelsohn's other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the George Jean Nathan Prize for Dramatic Criticism.

His first book, "The Elusive Embrace," published by Knopf in 1999, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. In 2002, he published a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, "Gender and the City in Euripides' Political Plays." In 2006 Mr. Mendelsohn's international bestseller "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," was published in the United States to extraordinary critical acclaim. A New York Times Notable Book of 2006 and a 'Best of the Year' pick in a dozen other newspapers, The Lost won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Salon Book Award, and a number of other honors; in its foreign translations it has been awarded the Prix Médicis (France), the ADEI-WIZO Prize (Italy) and was short-listed for the Duff Cooper Prize (UK). With now over half a million copies in print, it has been translated into a dozen other languages for publication throughout Europe and in Israel.

In August, 2008 a collection of Mr. Mendelsohn's critical essays about books, theater, and film, entitled "How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken," most of them from the New York Review of Books, was published by HarperCollins, and was subsequently named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008. In April 2009, his two-volume translation, with commentary, of the complete works of Constantine Cavafy, including the first-ever translation of the poet's "Unfinished Poems", was published by Alfred A. Knopf and immediately hailed as "extraordinary" (The New Yorker), "the definitive Cavafy for some time to come" (Publishers Weekly), and "a work of art in its own right" (The New York Times Book Review). He currently working on a new book, "Odysseys: Adventures in Reading the Greeks," to be published in 2012.

Mr. Mendelsohn divides his time between homes in New York City and in New Jersey, where his family live.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartrending And Hypnotic, February 1, 2007

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Hardcover)

This is one of the saddest, most heartrending books I have read in years. I could not bear to stop reading, even when I was revolted by the descriptions of torture and death that were visited upon innocents. There can never be too many books about the Holocaust, particularly in these days when some deny that it even took place. This one is especially important since it contains so many eye witness accounts from aged people whose voices must soon be quiet forever.

As a young boy growing up among his extended Jewish family Daniel Mendelsohn was mystified by the tears that broke out whenever he entered a room occupied by his grandparents and great-aunts and uncles. He looked so much like Schmiel, a man he only vaguely knew to be an uncle who had died in Eastern Europe during World War II. Fortunately, Daniel became interested in family history at an early age and began to ask questions and keep records. Eventually, as an adult, he and his siblings undertook to discover what had actually happened to Uncle Schmiel and his family.

The resulting journeys took Daniel to Ukraine, Israel, Poland, Sweden, and Australia among other places and allowed him to meet many former residents of Bolochow, the shtetl in which Daniel's family, including Schmiel, had lived. He interviewed witnesses to the deaths of Schmiel and his wife and daughters and recorded sometimes conflicting accounts of their deaths and those of thousands of others. At times the stories are repetitive, but they are no less compelling to read.

I liked this book on a number of levels. First, as I said above, its another essential Holocaust record and must be one of the last to record so many first hand accounts of what happened during the Final Solution. Second, the many characters are very appealing. My own family is white Southern Protestant for the most part, but I recognized so many traits we have in common with the Jagers, Mendelsohns, and other former residents of Bolochow, making me profoundly thankful that my familys'lives and fates have been so tranquil in comparison. Thirdly, the book is beautifully written, with the accounts of Daniel's searches interspersed with fascinating discussions of Jewish commentaries on the Book of Genesis. Highly recommended.

117 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I've read in a very long time, September 22, 2006

By 

Amy A. Hecht (Rye Brook, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Hardcover)

I could not put this book down for three days. Literally. I got food on it and bathwater and fell asleep reading with my head on the table at 3 am. I woke the next morning groping for it. It is moving and powerful and beautifully written. I cannot recommend it more highly and have already purchased copies for my friends and family.

67 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Search For One's Family, September 22, 2006

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Hardcover)

Mr. Mendelsohn has lost 6 family members in the Holocaust and has reclaimed their lives in "The Lost." This is not a dry, academic tome with statistics and analysis of the death camps. The author is a participant within the book as he successfully plays detective to uncover the fate of his relatives. The writing is nothing less than brilliant and never boring. He uncovers betrayals, sacrifices and heroics within the small town of Bolechow, Poland. Mr. Mendelsohn seems to have found every aged survivor from Bolechow -- this book is their witness to the Holocaust.