The Dallas Goethe Center launches a new feature, German Books in English Translation with occasional reviews of contemporary works that have not yet been translated into English, but are receiving considerable attention in the German Press.

To initiate the series I have chosen Jurek Becker's Jacob The Liar, which was published in 1996 by Arcade Publishing in New York. Leila Vennewitz received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Übersetzerpreis for her translation of the novel, a prestigious prize given each year by the German Government for the best translation of a literary work into English. The novel was originally published in Germany in 1969. Today, Jacob The Liar has achieved the status of a classic in several European countries, partially due to its topical subject matter: the life in a Jewish ghetto. Becker, born in 1937 in Poland, spent his youth in Ghettos and concentration camps. It was only in 1945 when he moved with his father to Berlin that he learned the German language. Becker died on March 14, 1997 of cancer.

It is the fascinating story of Jacob and his imaginative inventiveness that keeps the novel moving. Set in a Polish Ghetto near the close of World War II, the novel focuses on the unheroic figure of Jacob Heym, an ex-proprietor of a modest café that specializes in potato pancakes. He now finds himself a forced laborer. He is totally closed off from any outside news about the war, especially since the possession of a radio is punishable by death. One day when he is summoned to be interrogated he accidentally overhears a news broadcast of the Red Army's advance to a town some three hundred miles away. When he tells the good news to his fellow men afterwards, nobody believes the story. He then proclaims that he has heard the news on his radio. Thereafter, he is continuously pestered to provide further news. In an act of desperation, he begins to invent one news story after another. Most of his daily fabrications center around the inexorable Russian advance. Strangely enough, the suicide rate in the Ghetto drops to zero as the people begin to listen to his daily inspiring reports. Becker invents about a dozen people and their stories, which he has taken from the daily news reports of his "non-existing" radio.

Through his stories Jacob provides his fellow Jews with hope in a totally hopeless situation. However, he soon gets fed up with creating all these stories and decides to give up the entire charade. He tells his oldest friend the truth, that he has never owned a radio. His friend hangs himself. There are actually two endings in this imaginary array of stories. The one is the arrival of the Russian Army which puts the watchtowers in flames. This is the ending the narrator prefers. However, the other ending is how it actually happened.

In his writing, Becker continuously combines the serious with the comic and satirical. Here is a short passage in which one of the characters by the name of Mischa gets punished by a German corporal for sitting down instead of working.

The corporal in command of the sentry detail sees a lanky fellow sitting on the ground, just sitting there, hasn't even collapsed, propping himself on his hands and staring up into the sky. The corporal straightens his tunic and comes striding toward them, little fellow that he is.

"Watch out!" Jacob cries, nodding toward the danger approaching in all its dignity.

Mischa regains his senses, comes down to earth, gets up, knows what is about to happen but can't keep the look of pleasure off his face. He busies himself with the crates, is about to tip one on its side, when the corporal hits him from the side. Mischa turns toward him; the corporal is a head shorter than he and has trouble reaching up to hit Mischa in the face. It almost verges on the comical, not suitable for a German newsreel, more like a scene from an old slapstick silent movie when Charlie the little policeman tries to arrest the giant with the bushy eyebrows, and, try as he will, the big fellow doesn't even notice him. We all know that Mischa could lift him off the ground and tear him to pieces. If he wanted to. The corporal its him a few more times--by now his hands must be hurting--then shouts something or other that nobody's interested in and only lays off when a thin trickle of blood runs out of the corner of Mischa's mouth. Then he straightens his tunic again and belatedly notices that in the excitement his cap has fallen off; he picks it up, puts it on, goes back to his men, and marches away with the off-duty sentry detail behind him.

Mischa wipes the blood from his mouth with his sleeve, winks at Jacob, and reaches for a crate.

Other novels by Jurek Becker are:

Der Boxer (1976)

Schlaflose Tage (1978)

Bronsteins Kinder (1986)