Louis Begley (born Ludwik Begleiter; October 6, 1933) is a Jewish American Polish-born novelist. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical Holocaust novel Wartime Lies (1991) and the Schmidt trilogy: About Schmidt (1996), Schmidt Delivered (2000) and Schmidt Steps Back (2012).

Life

Early life

Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi, then part of the Polish Republic and now in Ukraine, the only child of a physician. Using forged identity papers that enabled them to pretend to be Polish Catholics, he and his mother survived the Nazi occupation in which many Polish Jews were killed.

He lived with his mother at first in Lwów, and then in Warsaw until the end of the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising. By the time World War II ended, they were in Kraków, where they were reunited with Begley’s father.

During the school year 1945/46, Begley…Read more on Wikipedia