The book is set to be highlighted in an upcoming Ken Burns documentary that explores the complex relationship between the U.S. and the Holocaust. It delves into historical events, societal attitudes, and government actions during this critical period, offering insights into how America responded to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Through a blend of personal stories and broader historical analysis, the book aims to shed light on the moral dilemmas faced by the nation and the lasting impact of these choices.
The narrative intertwines personal memoir with investigative journalism as a writer delves into his family's tragic World War II history. This unique blend of genres creates an epic exploration of time, memory, and the complexities of family and historical legacy. Through a meticulous search for truth, the story reveals deep emotional insights and the impact of the past on the present.
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.
Focusing on the Greek conception of gender and Athenian civic identity, this study offers a fresh analysis of Euripides' "Children of Herakles" and "Suppliant Women." It challenges the perception of these works as artistic failures by highlighting their formal elegance and intellectual complexity. This comprehensive examination, the first in fifty years, aims to reshape the understanding of these plays within the context of gender dynamics and political themes in ancient Greece.
"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
"A memoir, biography, work of history, and literary criticism all in one, this moving book tells the story of three exiled writers-Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon, and W. G. Sebald-and their relationship with the classics, from Homer to Mimesis. In a genre-defying book hailed as "exquisite" (The New York Times) and "spectacular" (the TLS), best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell. Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism,Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul... François Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus-a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years-resulted in his banishment... and the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home. Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books-a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading theOdyssey with his elderly father-that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life"-- Provided by publisher
Daniel Mendelsohn showcases his exceptional critical prowess in this collection, blending scholarly insight with a conversational tone. Spanning diverse eras and genres, he explores subjects from Roman games to contemporary video games, offering profound judgments that are both emotionally resonant and intellectually stimulating. His unique approach combines deep erudition with sharp wit, making this work a compelling read for anyone interested in the arts and literature.
From the best-selling author of 'The Lost', a deeply moving tale of a father,
a son and the lessons of a lifetime told through a transformative journey in
reading - and reliving - Homer's epic masterpiece.
"In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways. Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture's Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a "Greek DNA" in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the "aesthetics of victimhood" in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgard. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence--a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer. This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist's personal essays, including his "critic's manifesto" and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics."-- Provided by publisher
