Five Stories

The five stories in this edition are diverse in theme and were chosen to demonstrate Jurek Becker's talent as a storyteller: a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust pretends to become a child again and to re-experience events in a Polish ghetto through his own five-year-old eyes; a loyal servant of the State describes how he himself has come under state surveillance; an official analyzes his own split personality and explains how his alter ego has taken control; a car driver tells how he betrays a fugitive to the police; a young man confronts a housing official with an extraordinary request. Jurek Becker's stories are rooted in his unusual personal history - he was a child in the Lodz ghetto and in concentration camps; then in the former German Democratic Republic he became a loyal party member turned outspoken critic of hard-line trends. His writing transcends the limited context of the GDR, however, and makes political statements which are still relevant today. This critical edition of Becker's work is designed to introduce English readers to this author and to help them explore the texts through the medium of German.


Genre: Literary Fiction