From 2000 until 2002, he was the weekly book critic for New York magazine, for which he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Reviewing in 2001. Since 2000, he has been a frequent contributor of book, film, and theater reviews to The New York Review of Books; for the latter, he was awarded the 2002 George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism. His book reviews and essays on literary topics appear as well in The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, and he is also a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. His work has been widely anthologized in collections including "The Best American Travel Writing," "The Mrs. Dalloway Reader," "Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca," and (for “Republicans Can Be Cured!”, his satirical New York Times Op-Ed piece about the discovery of a gene for political conservatism) "Best American Humor." In addition to his other honors, Mr. Mendelsohn is the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. In April, 2008 he was the Richard Holbrooke Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.
Mr. Mendelsohn is the author of three books. His 1999 memoir of sexual identity and family history, "The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity" (Knopf, 1999; Vintage, 2000) was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; a French translation is scheduled for publication early in 2009. His scholarly study of Greek tragedy, "Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays," was published in October 2002 by Oxford University Press, and appeared in February, 2005 in paperback.
In September, 2006, Mr. Mendelsohn's international bestseller, "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," the story of his search to learn about the fates of family members who perished in the Holocaust, was published by HarperCollins to extraordinary critical acclaim in publications from People (four stars, critic's choice) to The New York Review of Books ("the most gripping, the most amazing true story I have read in years"); from O, the Oprah Magazine ("stunning...beautiful and powerfully moving") to the Los Angeles Times ("magnificent and deeply wise"). Front-cover reviews were featured in the Chicago Tribune ("a work of major significance and pummeling impact"); the New York Times Book Review, which declared THE LOST "a powerful work of investigative empathy" that "draws us more deeply into the experience of [the Holocaust] than we might have thought possible," "a new way of telling a story we thought we knew"; and the Washington Post Book World, in which Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel called THE LOST "a vast, highly colored tapestry...a remarkable personal narrative, rigorous in its search for truth, at once tender and exacting."
THE LOST, a New York Times Bestseller as well as a L. A. Times and Boston Globe bestseller, was named among the notable or best books of 2006 by numerous publications, including The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, NPR's "Fresh Air," The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Salon.com. It was awarded the National Book Critics' Circle Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Salon Book Award, and the American Library Assocation Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Literature.
In September 2007, the French translation of "The Lost" ("Les disparus") was published in France, where it was immediately hailed as "the book of the year" and "the masterpiece of the season," and where it became a bestseller soon after publication. In November 2007 it was awarded the Prix Médicis Etranger, one of the two most prestigious literary awards in France available to foreign works; it was nominated as well for the other, the Prix Femina.
The year 2007 also marked publications of the book in Australia and the United Kingdom, where it was short-listed for the Duff Cooper Prize, and (in translations) in The Netherlands, Spain, Italy (where it became an immediate bestseller), and Israel, with translation and publication in Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Greece scheduled for 2008/2009.
Daniel Mendelsohn is currently finishing a new translation of the complete works of the modern Greek poet C. P. Cavafy, which will be published by Knopf in April, 2009. A collection of his critical essays, "How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken," will be published by HarperCollins in August, 2008.
From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Mendelsohn was a Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Princeton University; he is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College. He divides his time among homes in New York City, New Jersey, and the Hudson Valley.
Those interested in booking Mr. Mendelsohn for speaking engagements should contact Lydia Wills at the Paradigm Agency: lwills@paradigmagency.com.
A current calendar of his tour and speaking events may be found online at http://www.harpercollins.com/author/tour.aspx?authorID=25938
If you are interested in learning more about, contibuting to, or joining in our efforts to preserve the Jewish heritage of Bolechow and other Galician shtetls, please go to www.bolechow.com.
For those interested in the photography of Matt Mendelsohn: www.mattmendelsohn.com.
