The Wall

Jurek Becker was one of the giants of postwar German literature. The novel for which he is best-known, Jacob the Liar, won wide acclaim, was awarded the Heinrich-Mann and Charles Veillon Prizes, and was made into two movies. It has been called "a novel about the martyrdom of Europe's Jews that has never been surpassed” (Times Literary Supplement). The Wall is a new, brief collection of stories by Becker that have either never been translated into English or been published here in book form before. The title story, "The Wall,” recounts two boys' risky adventure when they scale the wall of a transit camp to visit the ghetto their families have recently vacated. In "The Most Popular Family Story,” a favorite anecdote recounted year after year at the gatherings of an extended Jewish family subtly marks the absences left by the Holocaust. Also included are two stories of Communist East Germany and the wall that divided Berlin, "The Suspect” and "Romeo,” as well as a short essay on the Lodz ghetto, "The Invisible City.” Christine Becker has provided an introduction to the collection.
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Jurek Becker was born in 1937 in Lodz, Poland. He was interned the Lodz ghetto with his parents from 1940 to 1944 and was subsequently a prisoner in the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. After the war, Becker's father took him to East Berlin, where they were among the few surviving Jews who chose to stay in Germany. He became a screenwriter and novelist. A dissident in East Germany, in 1977 he emigrated to West Berlin. He died in 1997.
Christine Becker is the widow of Jurek Becker and speaks frequently about his work.