In the first biography of this figure, Sander Gilman tells the story of Becker's life in five worlds: the Polish-Jewish middle-class neighborhood where Becker was born; the Warsaw ghetto and the concentration camps where Becker spent his childhood; the socialist order of the GDR, which Becker idealized, resisted, and finally was forced to leave; the isolated world of West Berlin, where he settled down to continue his writing; and the new, reunified Germany, for which Becker served as both conscience and inspiration.

In a Jewish ghetto during World War II, a man manages to raise flagging spirits by circulating rumors of Allied victories and that the ghetto will soon be liberated by the Red Army. At this news, many people who are thinking of suicide decide to live.

"In this follow-up work to Jacob the Liar, Becker tells the story of a man named Aron Blank, tracing his life from his release from a concentration camp in the summer of 1945 through the next twenty or so years. Living in a ghetto at the start of the war, Aron had lost his wife who one day was arrested by the Nazis. In desperation, he turned over his two-year-old son, Mark, for safe-keeping to a neighbor just before he was deported. Now, having survived the war, Aron sets out, with the help of an American relief organization, to find his son."--Jacket.

"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. . . . interrogating and torturing him in an attempt to get him to admit to his war crimes" ("Booklist"). "A chilly and disquieting novel".--"Los Angeles Times".

Jürek 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 Lódz 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 collision course with the state in which he has painlessly, if numbly, lived his life. The results, while harsh, are not unwelcome as he finds a new vitality in a world seen through new eyes. Translated by Leila Vennewitz.

Remembering East Germany is a memoir focused on experiences Richard A. Zipser had while travelling and doing research in communist East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. The memoir is based primarily on a 396-page file the East German secret police--the Stasi--compiled on him with the help of at least ten informants over a twelve-year period. The reports in the file provide a kind of factual foundation for the memoir, as do reports about Zipser found in the Stasi-files of other persons, various printed materials, letters he wrote and received, and some memories as well. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990, Zipser was able to obtain a copy of his Stasi-file, a process that took seven years from beginning to end. His memoir provides unique insights into a society and literary scene that no other Westerner was able to experience so intensely. It reflects, on several levels, how he experienced communist East Germany and how it in turn experienced him. This fascinating book transports its readers back in time to the chilling Cold War days of yesteryear.