Wise and tender, this astonishing memoir bravely interrogates a personal story of mental health through a family history of murder, dispossession, silence, and the long echo of the Holocaust across generations
Luiz Schwarcz was born in São Paulo, in 1956. He began his career as an editor at Brasiliense and later founded Companhia das Letras, in 1986. In 2017, he received the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of the children’s books Minha vida de goleiro (1999) and Em busca do Thesouro da Juventude (2003), and the short story collections Discurso sobre o capim (2005) and Linguagem de sinais (2010).
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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