The Emperor of Lies: A Masterwork of Holocaust Fiction

“It would seem difficult,” says the New York Times Book Review, “after so much retelling, to write a freshly felt, fully absorbing novel about the Holocaust—and yet that is precisely what Steve Sem-Sandberg has done.” Coming to us from Sweden, Sem-Sandberg is a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, and translator, and all of these skills are deployed in this monumental work. The Emperor of Lies is based on a historical figure, Chaim Rumkowski, leader of the Łódź ghetto, and the book is “both super-realist and surrealist,” with an archival quality and intense intimacy. Don’t miss it.

Steve Sem-Sandberg, interviewed by Daniel Schifrin