The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

In his remarkable and original epic, part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part detective work, Daniel Mendelsohn tried to reconstruct the reality of the lives the six members of his family - his great-uncle Shmiel, his wife and their four daughters- who perished in the Holocaust and whose compelling absence has haunted his family. Here he discusses with Adam Phillips memory, the past, families, and the limits of storytelling.

Daniel Mendelsohn is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books as well as the New York Times Magazine and the New York Times Book Review, and is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. His first book, The Elusive Embrace, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. He teaches at Bard College. The Lost  won the prestigious Prix Medicis Etranger in France. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel called it "a vast, highly colored tapestry...a remarkable personal narrative, rigorous in its search for truth, at once tender and exacting." 

Adam Phillips is a child psychotherapist and essayist. He is also the General Editor of the new Penguin edition of the selected works of Sigmund Freud and a contributor to the London Review of Books.

In association with the London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/