Wartime Lies

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Wartime Lies is a semi-autobiographical novel by Louis Begley first published in 1991. Set in Poland during the years of the Nazi occupation, it is about two members of an upper middle class Jewish family, a young woman and her nephew, who defy the persecution of Jews by assuming Catholic identities. Time and again the boy, who narrates the story from some remote point in time, reminisces about how he learned at an early age to lie in order to survive. Thus, his whole adult life is founded on the "wartime lies" of his childhood.

Wartime Lies won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in 1991. The French version, Une éducation polonaise, won the Prix Médicis étranger in 1992.

1 Plot summary
2 Film adaptations
3 External links
4 Read on
5 Footnotes

[edit] Plot summary

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[edit] Film adaptations

In the early 1990s, Stanley Kubrick almost went into production on a film of Wartime Lies. The first draft screenplay, titled Aryan Papers, had been penned by Kubrick himself. Kubrick chose not to make the film due to the release of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust-themed Schindler's List in 1993. In addition, according to Kubrick's wife, Christiane, the subject itself had become too depressing and difficult for the director. Kubrick eventually concluded that an accurate film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of cinema.

In 2005, William Monahan was hired to adapt Wartime Lies for Warner Independent Pictures in co-operation with John Wells Productions.^[1] The film is scheduled for release in 2009. ^[2]