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Jurek Becker (1937-97) is best known for his novel Jacob the Liar,
which follows the life of a man, who, like Becker, lived in the
Lodz ghetto during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.
Throughout his career, Becker also wrote nonfiction, and the
essays, lectures, and interviews collected in My Father, the
Germans and I share a common thread in that they each speak to
Becker's interactions with and opinions on the social, political,
and cultural conditions of twentieth-century Germany. Becker, who
had lived in both German states and in unified Germany, was
passionately and humorously active in the political debates of his
time. Becker never directly aligned himself with either the
political ideology of East Germany or the capitalist market forces
of West Germany. The remains of fascism in postwar Germany, and the
demise of Socialism, as well as racism and xenophobic violence,
were topics that perpetually interested Becker. However, his
writings, as evidenced in this collection, were never pedantic, but
always entertaining, retaining the sense of humor that made his
novels so admired. My Father, the Germans and I gives expression to
an exceptional author's perception of himself and the world and to
his tireless attempt to bring his own unique tone of linguistic
brevity, irony, and balance to German relations.
An East German schoolteacher, is jolted into an awareness of his
mortality by a seeming heart attack. The actions he takes afterword
put him on a collisioin course with the state in which he has
painlessly, if numbly, lived his life. The rusults, while harsh,
are not unwelcome as he finds a new vitality in a world seen
through new eyes. Translated by Leila Vennewitz.
East Berlin, 1973: an 18-year-old Jew discovers that his father's
friends are holding prisoner a former Nazi concentration camp guard
in the family cottage. The three older men have handcuffed the
ex-Nazi to the bed and are interrogating and torturing him in an
attempt to get him to admit to his war crimes. . . . Becker keenly
shows the tension between members of the Holocaust generation and
their children, who are unable to understand the complexity of that
nightmarish era of human history.--Booklist [A] chilly, disquieting
novel about historical slippage; about the seemingly inevitable
decline of horror into a vague and generic recollection. The East
German writer has devised something between story and allegory to
evoke the cold generational millennium that separates a father,
with his concentration-camp memories, from a son, adrift in a
society with no memories whatsoever.--Richard Eder, Los Angeles
Times Book Review Mr. Becker, writing simply and clearly in an
unstrained narrative, speaks with the voice of knowledge, and we do
well to listen to him.--Eva Figes, New York Times Book Review Jurek
Becker (1937-1998) is the author of Jacob the Liar, Sleepless Days,
The Boxer, and Amanda Herzlos.
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