The Absent Moon: A Memoir of a Short Childhood and a Long Depression

By Luiz Schwarcz

Book Overview

"A profoundly emotional book, and a brave one." --The New Yorker

A literary sensation in Brazil, Luiz Schwarcz's brave and tender memoir interrogates his ordeal of bipolar disorder in the context of a family story of murder, dispossession, and silence--the long echo of the Holocaust across generations

As a child, Luiz Schwarcz knew little about his grandfather and namesake, Lajos. Only later did he learn that Lajos, a devout Hungarian Jew, had been put on a train to a Nazi death camp with his son Andr , whom he ordered to leap to freedom at a rail crossing while he himself was carried on to death. What young Luiz did know was that his father, Andr , who had emigrated to Brazil, was an unhappy and silent man. Luiz blossomed into the family prodigy, becoming a groundbreaking literary publisher. He found a home in the family silence--a home that he filled with reading.

But then, at a high point of outward success, Luiz was brought low by a mental breakdown. The Absent Moon is the story of his journey both to that point and back from it, as Luiz learned to forge a more honest relationship with his own mind, with his family, and with their shared past. The culmination is this extraordinary book--the product of a lifetime's reflection, by a master storyteller.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 059349072X
• ISBN13: 9780593490723
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.3"