Ein toller Schreibstil. Manchmal ein bisschen langatmig, aber irgendwie braucht es das auch..

Чесно кажучи, важко оцінювати книгу на таку тему (Друга світова війна, єврейська тема, ґетто, концтабори), але я ніби вічність читала цю малесеньку книжечку, мені постійно заважало вмішування автора в історію.

Сама ж історія дуже цікава. Про брехуна Якоба, який брехнею дарував людям надію і тим самим - волю до життя.

Is there such a thing as a good lie? Whenever this question comes up, I imagine that most people can agree that white lies are fine. Without them, we’d probably be perpetually annoyed with one another. But when the lies get bigger, it becomes harder and harder to say if a lie is justified—a “good” lie—or not. Jacob Heym, the unwitting hero of Jurek Becker’s Jacob the Liar, wasn’t thinking about whether his lie was a good one or not when he told it. Jacob’s lie just slipped out. But his lie changed the lives of hundreds in the Łódź ghetto in the last year of the war...

Read there rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

3,25

Reads like a fever dream

Jakob lives in the ghetto, as WWII rages on and the Germans persecute him and the rest of the Jews. He accidentally hears a report that the Russians have reached a town not terribly far away and spreads the news to his neighbors and friends. When asked how he came by this information, he told them he had a radio (because they wouldn't have believed how he REALLY heard it). He perpetuates his initial lie and becomes a beacon of hope for the ghetto, but to what end? Is he feeding them false hope? Is he actually making it worse? The story calls into question the difference between living and surviving, what the role of hope plays not only in those Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust, but for all those facing impossible circumstances. In the end, I just wanted to hold them- Jakob, Lina, Rosa, Mischa, all of them. I've never hugged a book before, not out of compassion.

Food: a cup of black coffee, half drunk, with a half eaten macaroon. Bitter, sweet, unfinished.