The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

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The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
TheLost.jpg
Author Daniel Mendelsohn
Publication date
September 2006
Awards
ISBN 978-0-06-054297-9

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million is a non-fiction memoir by Daniel Mendelsohn, published in September 2006, which has received critical acclaim as a new perspective on Holocaust remembrance. It was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award,[ citation needed ] the National Jewish Book Award, [1] and the Prix Médicis in France.[ citation needed ] It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper History Prize in the UK[ citation needed ] and placed second for the 2006 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Nonfiction. [2] An international bestseller, The Lost has been translated into numerous languages, including French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, German, Romanian, Turkish, Norwegian, and Hebrew.

The Lost tells of Mendelsohn's world-wide travels in search of details about the lives and fates of a maternal great-uncle, Samuel (Shmiel) Jäger, his wife, Ester, and their four daughters who lived in Bolechow and were killed during the Nazi occupation. According to the author, the book "is about trying to find out exactly, specifically, what happened to those people." [3]

In writing The Lost, Mendelsohn notes a debt to Marcel Proust, telling Salon.com, "Clearly, the book is in some large sense about the possibility of recovering the past, so it's automatically a Proustian book."

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References

  1. "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  2. "Awards: B&N's Discoveries; Books for a Better Life". Shelf Awareness . 2007-03-01. Archived from the original on August 20, 2016. Retrieved 2024-04-23.
  3. O'Hehir, Andrew (December 14, 2006). "Finding "The Lost"". Salon.com. Retrieved 2020-11-29.