The German Book Office in New York has picked The Wall and Other Stories by Jurek Becker, introduction by Christine Becker, translated by Jonathan Becker (Arcade, $19.95, 9781628723250) as its May Book of the Month.
One of the giants of postwar German literature, Becker was born in 1937 in Lodz, Poland. He was interned the Lodz ghetto with his parents from 1940 to 1944 and was subsequently a prisoner in the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. After the war, Becker's father took him to East Berlin, where they were among the few surviving Jews who chose to stay in Germany. He became a screenwriter and novelist. A dissident in East Germany, in 1977 he emigrated to West Berlin. He died in 1997.
The Wall: And Other Stories is a new collection of stories that either have never been translated into English or have never been published here in book form. The GBO described The Wall this way: "The title story, 'The Wall,' recounts two boys' risky adventure when they scale the wall of a transit camp to visit the ghetto their families have recently vacated. In 'The Most Popular Family Story,' a favorite anecdote recounted year after year at the gatherings of an extended Jewish family subtly marks the absences left by the Holocaust. Also included are two stories of Communist East Germany and the wall that divided Berlin, 'The Suspect' and 'Romeo,' as well as a short essay on the Lodz ghetto, 'The Invisible City.' "
Christine Becker is the widow of Jurek Becker. Jonathan Becker is the son of Christine and Jurek Becker, finished school in the U.K. and worked at the Suhrkamp publishing house, Seagull Books in India and at the Volksbühne Berlin.