The works of Jurek Becker

Since the success of his first novel, Jakob der Lügner (1969), Jurek Becker continues to draw and puzzle literary scholars. Becker and his works elude classification. He is at once a Pole, a German, a Jew, and an Atheist. His prose has been called Holocaust, East German, and Exile literature. The consistent thematic development in his otherwise greatly varied literary achievements springs from a unique personal and political history - one that brings his reader closer to the German, as well as the human, situation in over half of this century.