Jurek Becker

Accidentally overhearing a radio account of the Russian Army advancing, Jakob elaborates on the story, generating hope among the Jewish inhabitants of a Nazi-occupied ghetto

Jacob the Liar

Jakob Der Luegner

Am Strand von Bochum ist allerhand los - Postkarten

Das Buch erzählt eine Geschichte aus dem Ghetto während des Krieges. Es ist nicht eine Geschichte vom Widerstand, sondern von einem Heldentum ganz anderer Art; eine melancholisch-heitere, leise, eine kunstvoll komponierte Geschichte ist es, die ohne Phantasie und Menschlichkeit nicht denkbar wäre und deren Held Jakob ein »Lügner aus Barmherzigkeit« ist.

Roman

Jakob der Lügner

Jakob il bugiardo

Marlen Haushofer

Shaun Whiteside

Christine Becker

And Other Stories

Wall

Roman, hvor 3 herrer fortæller om Amanda - en smuk kvinde - som et billede på Østtysklands undergangsskæbne

Amanda herzlos

Nach der ersten Zukunft

Durch die Lügen, die er aus Barmherzigkeit in einem polnischen Ghetto zur NS-Zeit verbreitet, wird ein alter Jude zum Helden wider Willen.

Released from a concentration camp after the war, Aron Blank searches desperately for his son, the only surviving member of his family, whom he was forced to abandon when the boy was two years old, and follows his subsequent struggles to rebuild a life for himself in East Berlin.

A Novel

The Boxer

​One of the most remarkable novels of the Holocaust ever written, and the basis of the 1999 major motion picture starring Robin Williams. A novel about the Holocaust "that has never been surpassed" (Times Literary Supplement), Jacob the Liar is a now classic work from one of the giants of German postwar literature and a tale of everyday heroism and the extraordinary power of illusion. In the ghetto, possession of a radio is punishable by death. Like thousands of his fellow prisoners, Jacob Heym is cut off from all news of the war—until he is arrested one evening and brought to the German military office, where he overhears a report of the Red Army’s advance to a city some 300 miles away. Miraculously, he is allowed to return to his quarters, but when he tries to spread the good news, the only way to make people believe him is to tell a lie: “How do I know? I have a radio.” One lie leads to another, and before long Jacob finds himself feeding the entire ghetto fabricated news reports of the Russians’ advance—reports that save lives by giving people renewed hope. So Jacob is a hero and a liar. But how much longer can his web of lies hold? Told with suspense and humor, here is a masterful tale of hope, desire, and the life-giving force of fiction. Awarded Germany's prestigious Heinrich Mann Prize for fiction and in a new translation by Leila Vennewitz, Jacob the Liar is a masterpiece of Kafkaesque comedy which unfolds with the impact of a timeless folk legend. This edition includes a new afterword by Louis Begley.

Arriving with his girlfriend at the family cottage for a rendezvous, a young man instead finds his father and two companions torturing a former Nazi concentration camp guard as the crimes of the past are remembered

Bronstein's Children

Robert C. Fuhrmann

A Translation of Jurek Becker's Nach Der Ersten Zukunft

After the First Future

Released from a concentration camp after the war, Aron Blank looks for and eventually finds the only other surviving member of his family, his son Mark, whom he was forced to abandon when Mark was only two years old. Working first in the black market and later as a Russian interpreter, Aron tries to rebuild a normal life for himself and his son in East Berlin. Decades later, with Mark lost in the Six-Day War, Aron tells his story to a young interviewer—the flow of his poignant narrative occasionally interrupted by their brief exchanges, which are peppered with humor. Written with the understated elegance that brought Becker worldwide acclaim for Jacob the Liar, this is a rare portrait of Jewish life in postwar Germany and a profoundly human story of survival, friendship, and fatherly love.

Jürek Becker (1937-97) is best known for his novel Jacob the Liar, which follows the life of a man, who, like Becker, lived in the Lódz ghetto during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. Throughout his career, Becker also wrote nonfiction, and the essays, lectures, and interviews collected in My Father, the Germans and I share a common thread in that they each speak to Becker's interactions with and opinions on the social, political, and cultural conditions of twentieth-century Germany. Becker, who had lived in both German states and in unified Germany, was passionately and humorously active in the political debates of his time. Becker never directly aligned himself with either the political ideology of East Germany or the capitalist market forces of West Germany. The remains of fascism in postwar Germany, and the demise of Socialism, as well as racism and xenophobic violence, were topics that perpetually interested Becker. However, his writings, as evidenced in this collection, were never pedantic, but always entertaining, retaining the sense of humor that made his novels so admired. My Father, the Germans and I gives expression to an exceptional author's perception of himself and the world and to his tireless attempt to bring his own unique tone of linguistic brevity, irony, and balance to German relations.

Jurek Becker

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