Jacob the Liar by Jurek Becker is a book you might have heard of, probably because of the movie version starring Robin Williams [it’s actually the second adaptation, the first was a German movie in the 70s].

The plot is quickly summarised: A ghetto in Poland during World War II (probably meant to be Lodz), near the end of the war. Jakob is one of the inabitants. One evening, he hears in a radio transmission that the Russians are around 500 km from their ghetto. He passes on the news, but has to pretend that he secretely owns a radio to be believed. As these things usually do, they get out of hand and Jakob has to start to lie and make up news so the people won’t lose hope.

I didn’t like the writing very much. I found Becker’s style tiring and tedious.
And I didn’t really like Jakob, although he definitely had good sides. But mostly, he was grumpy, moody and had a bad temper.

Unfortunately, this lessened the impact of this otherwise very powerful story. I somehow couldn’t access Jakob and both endings (yes, there are two) left me unsatisfied. [The Hollywood ending (yeah, they created a third one) would be the happiest version, but also the one most out of tune with the rest of the story. (Go figure.)]

So, summarising: good story badly told.