Wartime Lies

by Louis Begley

Book Overview

"Extraordinary...Rich in irony and regret... the] people and settings are vividly realized and his prose is] compelling in its simplicity."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
As the world slips into the throes of war in 1939, young Maciek's once closetted existence outside Warsaw is no more. When Warsaw falls, Maciek escapes with his aunt Tania. Together they endure the war, running, hiding, changing their names, forging documents to secure their temporary...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449001172
• ISBN13: 9780449001172
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Survival rendered hollow

Louis Begley is able to convincingly write of survival as seen through the innocence and straightforwardness of a young Jewish boy. A boy whose life gradually becomes a web of lies and inward and outward loss. Loss which he will ultimately not be able to ever recover from. This is a short book with appeal to adults and young adults given the young protagonist and appropriate content.

The war ends; the lies and sadness don't.

This affecting autobiographical novel chronicles the life of a little Jewish boy and his family during World War II Poland. It is narrated by the now grown boy, who begins by reflecting on his adult life and his attachment to the Aeneid, whose eponymous character likewise escaped the destruction of the world he knew. But unlike Aeneas, who survived to found the city of Rome, Begley's narrator finds no new home for himself--all he had and, even all he was, was ripped away by the lies that allowed him to survive.Maciek, the little boy the narrator once was, is a Jewish child who grows up cosseted and loved by his family. The outbreak of the war changes all that, as the family's survival depends on moving from one place to another, always hiding their Jewish identity and blending in with the general population. One by one, most of his family die or vanish. Maciek and his Aunt Tania somehow survive, cautiously maintaining a fearful distance from those around them in order to keep from being discovered. But survival takes its toll--after the war is over, the lies have become protective coloration and aren't so easily disposed of. The little boy Maciek was is no longer. "Wartime Lies" has its moments of suspense, but those aren't what linger at the end. The true impact of the book comes from the child's matter-of-fact narration. Many of the situations in the book should be emotionally charged, but the flatness of the narrative doesn't reflect this. It's as if the adult narrator is talking about a different person, and in many ways he is. The distance between child and adult reflects the true tragedy of the story. In order to survive physically, the child's psyche has been irreparably damaged. All told, "Wartime Lies" is a stunning book, quietly moving. It is one of the best Holocaust novels that I have read.

Old Tale, New Twist

Louis Begley's novel, Wartime Lies, is set during the German invasion of Poland in World War II. After the Nazis take over their town and send them to a ghetto, Maciek-a young Jewish boy-and his family must to take on new identities in order to survive the German occupation. The family is forced to separate and only Maciek and his aunt Tania are left together, posing as a widowed mother and her son while they travel through Poland looking for refuge. I don't tend to dwell much on my ethnic background. I'm an American. I was born in America, as were my parents and my parent's parents. Still, if you ask me what nationalities I am, I'll tell you. I'm half Polish, with the other half being mostly Irish, with some English, and Welsh. I don't look stereotypically Polish or Irish, and both my families come from Christian backgrounds, so I don't look Jewish. I've never been to any of these countries, I don't speak their languages, and I'm not particularly well versed in their histories. I'm just your average American, with a very Polish last name, Zakrzewski. My family simplified the pronunciation to "Za-crew-ski," though it sounds quite different in Polish. I'd like to know more about my family's background and what brought both branches here to America. I could ask my Grandmothers and I know they'd tell me, but it just isn't something that we seem to talk about in my family. Out of the two countries, I probably know the least about Poland. If my last named started with "Mc" or "Mac" maybe I wouldn't care as much, but since I'll always be identified first as Polish, I have some deep, unfulfilled interest in this nation.It's not everyday I read about Poland. I've learned about World War II, and the atrocities of the Holocaust. I know about Germany's invasion of Poland and of Auschwitz, but it's all textbook knowledge and documentaries from the Discovery Channel. Most of the information I know is cold and sterile. As someone who wasn't born until 1981, the closest thing I can get to a first hand experience is usually from a survivor of a concentration camp. Rarely does myself-or anyone for that matter-get a fist hand look at what it was to live during these times, outside the nazi camps and Jewish ghettos. Bagley does a fine job in showing us what it meant to be a Jew in Poland during World War II from a perspective greatly different from those poor souls who ended up in Hitler's death camps.Like Dante's pseudo-self in his Divine Comedy, Maciek-the hero of Bagley's tale-wanders around his own hell with his aunt Tania as a protector and guide. Just like Dante, Maciek is immune to the actual terrors of the German invasion, due to his forged documents stating he is of Aryan decent, and must travel through his ravished homeland as an outsider observing the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Since Maciek is only one person, the purpose of his journey isn't to change his homeland. His task is to inform the rest of his country, and the worl

A good book that would have made a great film

It's heartbreak to realize that the late great filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, came very close to turning this book into a movie in the early-to-mid 1990's that was to be called "Aryan Papers." And then along came Speilberg's "Schindler's List" and he dropped the project. If you are a Kubrick fan, you should read this book just to see what might have been. The ending is very "Kubrikian" indeed.

Child's View of Nazi's in Poland

Begley's book is a gripping, stark tale of a Jewish child and his young aunt struggling, and I do mean, struggling to survive and hide from the Nazis and unsympathetic Poles in Poland during WWII. Although there are many, many stories about this dark period in our history, rare is the one written in this book's unnerving style. Sparse, riveting and fluidly crafted, Begley's tale is told from the viewpoint of child with absolutely NO dialogue - just the child's probing inner thoughts and frightening depictions of the crumbling and menancing world around him. The lies and fabrications the young boy and his aunt weave to hide from persecution at every turn are unbelievably fragile, thereby creating a kinetic tension throughout the novel which gives the reader no hint of the outcome - is it tragedy or triumph? One must read to find out the truth behind these wartime lies