The Absent Moon

A Memoir of a Short Childhood and a Long Depression

By: Luiz Schwarcz

Narrated by: Theodore Copeland

Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

When Luiz Schwarcz was a child, he was told 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. As many children of trauma do, Luiz assumed responsibility for his parents’ happiness, and for a time blossomed into the family prodigy. But then, at a high point of outward success, he was brought low by a devastating mental breakdown.

This astonishing memoir interrogates a personal story of mental health through a family history of murder, dispossession, silence and the long echo of the Holocaust across generations – animated by the love and compassion of a master storyteller.

©2023 Luiz Schwarcz (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

"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)