Daniel Adam Mendelsohn Books

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 From the award-winning, best- selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading - and reliving - Homer's epic masterpiece.

New volume in the Frick Diptych series pairs an essay by Frick curator Aimee Ng with a contribution by bestselling author Daniel Mendelsohn.

"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. The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust—an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him."--from amazon.com

Winner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, this genre-defying work by best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn delves into the connections between the randomness of life and the art of storytelling. Blending memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, it intertwines the narratives of three exiled writers who turned to classical texts to craft their own masterpieces that reflect on narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, a Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany, wrote his influential study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul. Francois Fenelon, a seventeenth-century French archbishop, penned a clever sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus, which served as a veiled critique of the Sun King and became a bestseller for a century, leading to his exile. W. G. Sebald, a German novelist self-exiled in England, created meandering narratives that explore themes of displacement and nostalgia. Amid these tales of exile and artistic struggle, Mendelsohn recounts his own challenges in writing two books—a Holocaust family saga and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father—both haunted by themes of oppression and wandering. As the narrative unfolds, a climactic revelation about the interconnected lives of these three figures prompts a reevaluation of the ties between narrative, history, art, and life.

Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, has come to Thebes, and the women are streaming out of the city to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing in wild frenzy. The king, Pentheus, denouces this so-called 'god' as a charlatan. But no mortal can deny a god and no man can ever stand against Dionysus. This stunning translation, by the award-winning poet Robin Robertson, reinvigorated Euripides' devastating take of a god's revenge for contemporary readers, bringing the ancient verse to fervid, brutal life.

Ausgezeichnet mit dem renommierten Malaparte-Preis 2022 »Alle Menschen sehen sich demselben Rätsel gegenüber: Woher weiß man, wer man ist?« Aufgewachsen als Sohn eines Mathematikers in einem Vorort auf Long Island, treibt es Daniel Mendelsohn weg von zu Hause, um herauszufinden, wer er ist: Er stürzt sich in sein Studium der Altphilologie und erkennt sich in den Texten der griechischen Klassiker wieder; um seine Wurzeln zu ergründen, erforscht er die Geschichte seiner Familie, osteuropäischer Juden; in New York City wird er Teil der Schwulenszene; die Sehnsucht nach einer eigenen Familie erfüllt sich wider alle Erwartungen. Ein leidenschaftliches Buch über die verschlungene Suche nach der eigenen Identität mit all den Konflikten, die damit einhergehen. Ein literarisch brillanter Streifzug - und eine Meditation über das Leben. Platz 2 der Sachbuch-Bestenliste von ZEIT, ZDF und Deutschlandfunk im Februar 2022

Of hij nu schrijft over de Ilias en de Odyssee of een vergelijking maakt tussen het werk van Karl Ove Knausgård en de televisieserie Suits , Daniel Mendelsohns essays over literatuur, film en televisie verrassen stuk voor stuk. In Pijn en genot laat Mendelsohn zien hoe de Grieken en Romeinen anno nu nog steeds als voorbeelden gelden. Ook schrijft hij over Hanya Yanagihara en over de vrouwen in Game of Thrones , en hij analyseert recente films over kunstmatige intelligentie - een onderwerp, zo brengt hij ons in herinnering, dat in de achtste eeuw voor Christus al Homerus' interesse wekte. Uit deze essaybundel, speciaal samengesteld voor zijn Nederlandse lezers, blijken Daniel Mendelsohns eruditie, zijn bereik als denker en de diepte van zijn analyses. Zijn essays zijn verplicht leesmateriaal voor eenieder die net als hij onze cultuur wil ontleden.