The Emper­or of Lies is an his­tor­i­cal nov­el set in the Lodz, Poland ghet­to under the Nazi-appoint­ed Jew­ish chair­man, Mordechai Chaim Rumkows­ki (aka Eldest of the Jews). It is close­ly based on sur­vivors’ oral accounts, diaries, offi­cial Ger­man doc­u­ments, and the Ghet­to Chron­i­cles. These newslet­ters were pub­lished in the ghet­to uncloud­ed by the mist of mem­o­ry, but cer­tain­ly sub­ject to the con­straints of cen­sor­ship and the per­cep­tion of its writ­ers.

Rumkows­ki believed that a ghet­to sup­port­ing high­ly pro­duc­tive work­shops cater­ing to Nazi needs would ensure its sur­vival and save its inhab­i­tants from depor­ta­tion and anni­hi­la­tion. To this end he fol­lowed Nazi demands, includ­ing pro­vid­ing req­ui­site num­bers of peo­ple for depor­ta­tion to the death camps. The ques­tion through­out the book: was Rumkows­ki a hero or a self-serv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor?

The author presents an over­whelm­ing­ly in-depth account of indi­vid­u­als and events, draw­ing the read­er into a vis­cer­al response to the stark real­i­ty of ghet­to life, mak­ing this a very dif­fi­cult book to read. It is a book for a seri­ous stu­dent of the Holo­caust and requires a very delib­er­ate, thought­ful read­ing, albeit an emo­tion­al­ly exhaust­ing one.

The Emper­or of Lies is fic­tion, but close­ly resem­bles non-fic­tion in style. Acknowl­edge­ments, after­ward, glos­sary, main characters.