Jurek Becker

David Clarke (University of Bath)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born c. 1937
Died 1997
Activity 1962-1994

Places

Born in Poland
Active in Germany

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Other

Film/TV Script-writer/ Screenwriter

Resources

Becker's Works

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Jurek Becker, one of the most innovative authors of the German Democratic Republic, is perhaps best known abroad through the English translation of his best selling novel

Jakob the Liar

and the novel's belated Hollywood film adaptation under the same title (dir. Peter Kassovitz, 1999). Besides these international successes, Becker's highly original novelistic oeuvre – which is currently being translated into English – and his literary remembrance of the Holocaust made him an important presence in the cultural life of the German-speaking countries and beyond.

Jurek Becker (Jerzy Bekker) was born in Lódz in Poland around 1937 as the son of lower middle-class, secular Jewish parents. When he was still a small child, his family was deported to the Lódz ghetto by German occupying forces

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1346 words

Citation: Clarke, David. "Jurek Becker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=6012, accessed 21 November 2024.]