Novel
Jacob the Liar
Jakob der Lügner
Jurek Becker · 1969
Synopsis
In a ghetto in occupied Poland, Jakob Heym, summoned to the German post for breaking curfew, hears on the radio there that the Red Army is approaching, and comes out free, which had never happened before. To stop his friend Mischa from stealing potatoes at the risk of his life, he claims to own a radio, forbidden on pain of death. The news spreads through the ghetto, hope returns and the suicides stop: Jakob has to invent new bulletins every day. A survivor tells the story, more than twenty years later.
Context
The project began as a film: accepted by the state studio in 1963, the screenplay was abandoned in 1966, when the director Frank Beyer was removed after the censorship of one of his films. Becker turned it into a novel, published in 1969 in East Berlin by Aufbau and in 1970 in the West by Luchterhand. The success of the book allowed Beyer to make the film in 1974, the only East German film nominated for the Oscar; an American adaptation, with Robin Williams, followed in 1999. The narrator fills the gaps in what he knows with suppositions and offers two endings.
Who it is for
A short novel, told by a survivor who mixes his memories, his post-war research and what he imagines.
Prizes and reception
The greatest success of its author: more than a hundred and fifty thousand copies in German and translations into twenty-six languages.