Este libro empieza con la historia de un muchacho que creció en una familia golpeada por la tragedia: seis de sus miembros desaparecieron en Europa durante la segunda guerra mundial. Era un asunto del que no se podía hablar y que fue adueñándose paulatinamente de la imaginación del joven Daniel Mendelsohn. Muchos años más tarde, a partir del descubrimiento de unas cartas que su abuelo recibió en 1939, el silencio se convirtió en una pregunta que lo interpelaba y decidió seguir la pista de los parientes perdidos durante el exterminio nazi. La búsqueda, que lo llevó a doce países de cuatro continentes, desembocó en la pequeña ciudad ucraniana donde todo comenzó y donde le esperaba la solución a un sinfín de misterios. En ese lugar, al final del camino, se revelará la diferencia que existe entre los acontecimientos que vivimos y el modo como los contamos. Esta historia real, escrita con la maestría de un novelista y en parte libro de memorias, reportaje, narración de misterio y pesquisa detectivesca, explora con brillantez la naturaleza del tiempo, de la memoria, la familia y la historia. Libro colosal, de aliento épico y una auténtica revelación editorial, Los hundidos nos cuenta qué es lo que naufraga, y lo que vuelve a la superficie, con el paso del tiempo.

For me this was a real Jekyll & Hyde of a book. Parts of it I found gripping and unputdownable; other parts were so tedious I skipped them (helpfully those parts were in Italics and easy to spot). So first to the negative; for me the author really needed to decide whether he was writing of his quest for his 'Lost' relatives (the book I was wanting to read) or a history of the Jewish faith and an analyses of commentaries on it. These interludes got in the way of the narrative and I'm afraid I was soon skipping them. I don't know much about the Jewish faith but if I I'd have wanted this much scholarly debate on the matter I would rather have gone elsewhere. What also infuriated me was the lack of speech marks. Many a time I got totally lost in a sentence and had to re-read it several times, mentally inserting the speech marks to make sense of it.
Now to the positive. The story of the author's quest for any kind of clue as to life and death of his ancestors in a tiny village in the Ukraine was moving, tragic, uplifting and very readable. He and various of his siblings and friends travelled the globe searching for survivors who might have pieces of the story, and along the way he seems to re-connect and become much closer to his own family. Gradually the jigsaw comes together and during the search we get to hear the stories of the survivors; what they saw and how they made it through. The last few chapters are gripping as Mendelsohn almost stumbles across far more than he ever thought possible-a key phrase 'let's go back for just one last look' was key. A shorter, edited version of this book would have been a fabulous read. ( )

Daniel Mendelsohn da bambino restava seduto per ore ad ascoltare i racconti del nonno. Erano storie di un tempo lontano e quasi magico, di un piccolo villaggio della Polonia, Bolechow, in cui la vita scorreva felice.(fonte: Google Books)

There may just be a vertical hierarchy in our popular understanding of the Holocaust. At the top, however uneasy, are the Survivors: it is through their testimony that we know to never forget. Their is also a measure of merit in having outwitted or simply survived the minatory machinations of the Nazis. below them are the victims, particularly present when the doltish ask "why they went like sheep, why they didn’t fight back, why they didn’t heed the signs in the 1930s?" Below that mound of evidence is nefarious mass of perpetrators, willing executioners, ordinary men, the devil incarnate and the betrayers.

If only life was that fucking simple.


Mr. Mendelson constructs a marvelous investigation sixty years after the fact. His training as a classicist lends a unique angle to his research. The idea of using Dido as an apt metaphor is astonishing: victim and exile, she prospers from her wits only to kill herself. If ever an example antiicpated the Survivor, this is it.
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Uno scrittore americano intraprende una ricerca mondiale, dall'Europa dell'Est all'Australia, alla Scandinavia e ad Israele, per scoprire cosa è successo a sei parenti scomparsi durante l'Olocausto.