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    Jacob the Liar
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    Jacob the Liar
    Unavailable
    Jacob the Liar
    Ebook325 pages5 hours

    Jacob the Liar

    By Jurek Becker and Louis Begley

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    An unforgettable tale of everyday heroism and the extraordinary power of illusion among Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust “that has never been surpassed” (Times Literary Supplement).
     
    Set in an unnamed Nazi-occupied ghetto, the story centers on an unlikely hero, Jakob Heym, who accidentally overhears news of vital importance: The Russians are advancing on a city 300 miles away. As Jakob’s tidings rekindle hope for liberation, he feels compelled to elaborate. Forming a protective bond with a young orphan girl, Jakob becomes caught in his own web of optimistic lies.
     
    Originally published in 1969 and awarded Germany’s prestigious Heinrich Mann Prize for fiction, Jakob the Liar inspired an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. Written by a Holocaust survivor, it is a masterpiece of Kafkaesque comedy “that unfolds with the impact of a moral parable or a folk legend” (Publishers Weekly).
     
    “A strange, powerful, moving work, beautifully written and well served by its translator.” —The New York Times Book Review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 7, 1996
    ISBN9781628720501
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Jacob the Liar

    4/5

    122 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Een getto in Oost-Europa ergens in 1943-1944; de sjofele Jakob Heym hoort een flard van een radiobericht op de Duitse Kommandatur, en maakt daaruit op dat de Duitsers moeten wijken voor de Russen, die niet meer op al te grote afstand staan. Hij vertelt het nieuws door, liegt dat hij zelf een radio heeft, en dan gaat de bal aan het rollen: het getto herleeft, iedereen maakt weer plannen, de zelfmoordcijfers storten in. Maar Jakob werkt zich met zijn leugentje ook flink in nesten. De auteur, - een vage medekampgenoot -, verzint twee eindes, allebei even uitzichtloos. Het verhaal gaat natuurlijk over de holocaust, maar het legt minstens evenveel nadruk op de beperkingen van de menselijke existentie, op de moeilijke, complexe verhoudingen tussen mensen, op het levengevende van hoop, op de warmte van medemenselijkheid. De auteur, hoewel zelf betrokken, houdt er een afstandelijke vertel-stijl op na, maar op een worstelende manier. Mooi!
    • 5/5
      Jakob hears a scrap of news from outside the world of the ghetto and manages to live to tell about it. When no one believes him, he invents a ficticious radio to authenticate his report. This one lie grows as the ghetto residents demand more news, and Jakob falls into the role of inventing hope for the doomed population. This was an excellent book. I really liked the story-telling. I'm not a big reader of Holocaust books, but I felt like this one really conveyed the ... everyday-ness, the triviality of the horrors of the ghetto- the way that it becomes understood both the horrors occurring and their inevitability, and the worn-down quality that produces. Without, also, being completely depressing. An extremely well-written book, recommended if you're interested in that kind of thing, or just if you like good literary fiction.
    • 3/5
      Jacob the Liar by Jurek Becker is a book you might have heard of, probably because of the movie version starring Robin Williams [it's actually the second adaptation, the first was a German movie in the 70s].The plot is quickly summarised: A ghetto in Poland during World War II (probably meant to be Lodz), near the end of the war. Jakob is one of the inabitants. One evening, he hears in a radio transmission that the Russians are around 500 km from their ghetto. He passes on the news, but has to pretend that he secretely owns a radio to be believed. As these things usually do, they get out of hand and Jakob has to start to lie and make up news so the people won’t lose hope.I didn’t like the writing very much. I found Becker’s style tiring and tedious.And I didn’t really like Jakob, although he definitely had good sides. But mostly, he was grumpy, moody and had a bad temper.Unfortunately, this lessened the impact of this otherwise very powerful story. I somehow couldn’t access Jakob and both endings (yes, there are two) left me unsatisfied. [The Hollywood ending (yeah, they created a third one) would be the happiest version, but also the one most out of tune with the rest of the story. (Go figure.)]So, summarising: good story badly told.
    • 5/5
      Jacob the Liar takes place in a Jewish ghetto in WWII Germany, when simple everyman Jacob Heym accidentally overhears a war report and leads his community to believe he has more insider knowledge than he really does. It becomes taxing and frustrating for him, being pestered for news continually since nobody else is allowed access to radio, newspaper, or any other form of news - but he has to sustain this lie and create hopeful reports that very very soon the Jews will be delivered out of their situation by approaching Russian troops. It is a simple story of sustaining unsubstantiated hope in a very bad time, as goodhearted Jacob does the best he can "to make use of the very last possibility that keeps them from just lying down and dying - with words, do you understand? I try to do that with words! Because that's all I have."
    • 5/5
      1943 oder 44: ein namenloses jüdisches Getto. Alles ist verboten: Bäume, Pflanzen, Tiere und natürlich ein Radio. Auf das steht die Todesstrafe. Und doch flüstert Jakob, er hätte im Radio gehört, die Russen seien im Vormarsch, schon bei einer Stadt B... Wie nicht die Hoffnung, seine Menschlichkeit, in einer ausweglosen Situation verlieren? Jurek Becker kam als zweijähriger mit seinen Eltern ins Ghetto von Łódź , dann in die KZ Ravensbrück und Sachsenhausen. Dies sein erster Roman, eine tragische Komödie hat jemand, vielleicht Becker selbst, ihn so genannt. Ein großer Erfolg, mit Recht, er verdient es, auch seiner Sprache wegen, die gefällt mir sehr. How to encourage hope in a hopeless situation? This book deservers all the praise it got (and being placed on the German school curriculum). Becker writes from his ghetto and KZ experience as a small child. (XI-15)