The Absent Moon

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What to expect

'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

When Luiz Schwarcz was a child, he knew very little about his grandfather Láios, a Hungarian Jew. Only later would he learn that Láios had ordered his son, Luiz’s father, to leap from a train taking them to a Nazi death camp, while Láios himself was carried on to his death. What Luiz did know was that his father’s melancholia haunted the house he grew up in.

Compassionate and tender, The Absent Moon interrogates a personal story of inherited trauma through a family history of murder, silence and the long echo of the Holocaust across generations.

'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

Critics 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

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