The Emperor of Lies
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second-largest Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Lódz. Its chosen leader: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman and orphanage director -- and the elusive, authoritarian power sustaining the ghetto’s very existence.
From one of Sweden's most critically acclaimed and bestselling authors, The Emperor of Lies chronicles the tale of Rumkowski's monarchical rule over a quarter-million Jews for the next four years. Driven by a titanic ambition, he sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex and strove to make it --and himself -- indispensable to the Nazi regime. Drawing on the detailed records of life in the Lódz ghetto, Steve Sem-Sandberg captures the full panorama of human resilience and probes deeply into the nature of evil. He asks the most difficult questions: Was Rumkowski a ruthless opportunist, an accessory to the Nazi regime driven by a lust for power? Or was he a pragmatic strategist who managed to save Jewish lives through his collaboration policies?
Winner of the August Prize, Sweden’s most important literary award, The Emperor of Lies is a haunting, profoundly challenging novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mammoth and crowded, this novel vividly illuminates the corner of history it portrays. In 1939 there were 320,000 Jews living in the Polish city of dz, whose Jewish self-government, established by the Nazis, was led by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a real historical figure, like many of this book's characters. Rumkowski, a childless widower and failed manufacturer, successfully runs orphanages, promising his charges safety even as he tells them lies. Hans Biebow, the Nazi head of the ghetto administration, believes that the hungry are the best workers; "Workers with full stomachs get bloated." Adam Rzepin is a Jewish boy devoted to his handicapped sister. These and many other characters fight for survival in the ghetto; some of the Jews make a fortune, but most survive on foul soup ("hot water with something greenish in it"), if they find food at all. Though Sem-Sandberg often writes with extraordinary detail (a section detailing the many ghetto suicides is terribly moving), as a novel, this book has many failings. Even characters whose mouths stream with verbiage remain underdeveloped; dialogue is often wooden and unconvincing. But as social history comes alive, it succeeds admirably in chronicling the horrors of everyday life in the dz ghetto.
