Lit in Translation

The Emperor of Lies

De fattiga i Łódź

Steve Sem-Sandberg (born 1958)

Translated by Sarah Death

English editions

In English

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The German occupiers wall in the Jews of Łódź and name the elder Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski as head of the ghetto. Inside, a quarter of a million people live under rigid orders, work themselves to death in the factories, starve, and try to flee with no chance of success. Yet there is resourcefulness too: the inhabitants keep a shared chronicle of daily life that slowly becomes an act of quiet resistance. Meanwhile trains begin carrying people off to destinations nobody yet understands, and the population shrinks. Rumkowski stands at the centre of it all, a figure whose role in the murder of Poland's Jews resists judgement, most of all where the ghetto's children are concerned.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Length
662 pages in the original
Genres
Historical, War (assigned by AI)
Set in
Poland, 1940s
First published
2009 by Albert Bonniers Förlag
Author's age
51 when first published
ISBN

9789100122669 (original)

9780374139643 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States)

9780571259205 (Faber & Faber, United Kingdom)

9780571259212 (Faber & Faber, United Kingdom)

9781250007636 (Picador, United States)

More
Wikidata