Description

‘A beautiful work that is in turn haunting, touching and redemptive’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
‘A profoundly emotional book, and a brave one’ THE NEW YORKER
‘Generous in spirit, devoid of self-pity, and an authentic literary achievement’ ANDREW SOLOMON

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When Luiz Schwarcz was a child, he was told little about his grandfather Laios, a Hungarian Jew. Only later would he learn that Laios had ordered his son, Luiz’s father, to leap from a train taking them to a Nazi death camp, while Laios himself was carried on to his death.

What Luiz did know was that his father’s melancholia haunted the house he grew up in. As many children of trauma do, Luiz assumed responsibility for his parents’ happiness, and for a time blossomed into the family prodigy. But then, at a high point of outward success, he was brought low by a devastating mental breakdown.

This astonishing memoir interrogates a personal story of mental health through a family history of murder, dispossession, silence and the long echo of the Holocaust across generations – animated by the love and compassion of a master storyteller.

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‘Brave, honest, devastating, and hopeful … Schwarcz is a masterful storyteller’ ARIANA NEUMANN
‘A lyrical and intimate portrait of the author’s lifelong, harrowing battle with depression’ ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Publisher Review

Fascinating, elegiac, heartbreaking and inspiring, this book is both a chronicle of the killing of the Holocaust, a memoir of unbearable suffering witnessed and felt for decades after; and an analysis of psychological trauma and memory - a beautiful work that is in turn haunting, touching and redemptive -- Simon Sebag Montefiore Brave, honest, devastating, and hopeful - a beautiful exploration of a man trying to understand his father, of how Holocaust trauma is passed down the generations and how we are all shaped by words and silences. Schwarcz is a masterful storyteller -- Ariana Neumann, author of WHEN TIME STOPPED This tender and lovely memoir of a child growing up in Brazil in a household whose characters were scarred by the Holocaust is unlike anything I can think of. It is also a lyrical and intimate portrait of the author's lifelong, harrowing battle with depression -- Abraham Verghese, author of CUTTING FOR STONE In this intimate and profound description of a life often marked by depression, Luiz Schwarcz touches on the insidious power of intergenerational trauma; on the terrible challenges of functioning despite a crippling disease; and on the burden of carrying a disability in relative silence. His is ultimately a book about identity, about how the author has managed, both despite and because of his depression, to inhabit a good marriage, an excellent career, a lovely family, and, perhaps most crucially, a coherent sense of self. It is generous in spirit, devoid of self-pity, and an authentic literary achievement -- Andrew Solomon A profoundly emotional book, and a brave one * The New Yorker * In The Absent Moon, Luiz Schwarcz, a legendary Brazilian publisher and global tastemaker, shares little of the glamorous life, focusing instead on the lifelong pain of clinical depression * New York Times *