The Absent Moon A Memoir of a Short Childhood and a Long Depression

A literary sensation in Brazil, Luiz Schwarcz's brave and tender memoir interrogates his ordeal of bipolar disorder in the context of a family story of murder, dispossession, and silence-the long echo of the Holocaust across generations
When Luiz Schwarcz was a child, he was told little about his grandfather and namesake, Láios-"Luiz" in Hungarian. Only later in life did he learn that his grandfather, a devout Hungarian Jew, had defied his country's Nazi occupiers by holding secret religious services in his home. After being put on a train to a German death camp with his son André, Láios ordered André to leap from the train to freedom at a rail crossing, while Láios himself was carried on to his death. What Luiz did know was that his father André, who had emigrated to Brazil, was an unhappy and silent man. Young Luiz assumed responsibility for his parents' comfort, as many children of...