The Little Liar
A Novel
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4.6 • 939 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with his most important novel to date, an unforgettable story of truth and lies set during the Holocaust.
Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading “north,” where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day.
But when the final train is loaded, Nico sees his family being herded into a boxcar. Only then does he discover that he has helped send them—and everyone he knows and loves—to their doom at Auschwitz.
Nico escapes—but he never tells the truth again.
In The Little Liar, Mitch Albom examines the human repercussions of deception by interweaving the stories of Nico, who yearns for forgiveness; his older brother, Sebastian, who vows revenge against him; Fannie, the girl who must choose between them; and Udo Graf, the Nazi officer who forever changed their lives with his lies.
Through the war years, the concentration camps, and the decades that follow, Albom reveals the consequences of each person’s honesty and dishonesty, bringing them back to where it all started in a staggering climax worthy of the best of Albom’s internationally embraced stories.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Mitch Albom loads industrial-sized themes like guilt and truth into The Little Liar and ends up with an inspiring tale. Nazis have invaded Salonika, Greece, where they start sending Jewish people to death camps. Unscrupulous German soldier Udo deceives young Nico, an unfailingly honest boy, into telling other Jewish people the trains are taking them to new homes. This starts a cycle of lies, death, resentment, and shame that goes from WWII all the way to the 1980s and includes Nico’s brother, Sebastian, as well as Fannie, the girl beloved by both brothers. The storytelling alone is gripping—Albom captures intimate details as well as all the drama of the novel’s epic sweep. But he takes dazzling artistic liberties, too, like having the personification of truth tell the story, addressing the reader directly along the way. It’s historical fiction with a hint of the otherworldly and a lot of heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The riveting if rushed latest from Albom (The Stranger in the Lifeboat) explores the legacy of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 1943, canny SS officer Udo Graf manipulates 11-year-old Nico into encouraging his neighbors to board a train to be resettled with their loved ones. When Nico sees his parents board the train, he realizes he's been tricked. He soon learns the train was headed to Auschwitz, and is wracked with guilt. After the war, Nico settles in Los Angeles under another name. In a parallel narrative, Nico's older brother, Sebastian, who blames Nico for sending their parents to their deaths, is searching for Nico as well as former SS officers. Albom is at his best tracing the brothers' trajectories after the war, describing how Sebastian comes to marry Nico's crush, Fannie, and portraying Fannie's unrequited love for the absent brother. Unfortunately, Albom races through the climactic final act, set in 1983, when Nico plans to return to Thessaloniki for an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first Auschwitz transport, and Sebastian, working with a Nazi hunter modeled after Simon Wiesenthal, is hot on Graf's trail. Still, this adds up to a weighty examination of the Nazis' lies and their lingering consequences.
Customer Reviews
The Little Liar
It’s a war story, but covers feelings, courage, family, forgiveness, and courage.
really makes someone think
i really enjoyed this book. there were a lot of quotes that really changed my perspective. the complexity of the stories and characters really makes it a beautiful story and i really enjoyed it.
Amazing!
Wonderfully written. Tuesdays with Morrie was a nice story, I just felt trapped in cliches. This book has echoes of that but avoids that in a way. Beautifully engrossed me in history, with a unique perspective in the holocaust for sure. Thanks Mr. Mitch Albom!