When Luiz Schwarcz was a child, he was told little about his grandfather and namesake Laaios-"Luiz" in Hungarian. Only later would he learn that his grandfather, a devout Hungarian Jew, had defied his country's Nazi occupiers by holding secret religious services in his home and, after being put on a train to a German death camp with his son Andrae, had ordered Andrae to leap from the train to freedom at a rail crossing while Laaios himself was carried on to his death. What Luiz did know was that his father was a very unhappy man, and his melancholia haunted the house. Young Luiz blossomed into the family prodigy, becoming an outwardly gregarious, athletic, and academically successful young man, eventually growing into a literary publisher of great promise. His house was still filled with silence, but he found a home in that silence-a home that he filled with books and with reading. But then, at a high point of outward success, Luiz was brought low by a devastating mental breakdown against which his resources were pitifully inadequate.
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