SOURCE: Filkins, Peter. “The Limits of Redemption.” World & I 16, no. 3 (March 2001): 234.

In the following review, Filkins traces Schmidt's trials, epiphanies of thought, and subsequent redemption in Schmidt Delivered.

With the publication of Wartime Lies in 1991, Louis Begley stepped to the center of international letters with the deeply compelling tale of a young Polish Jew forced to abandon his childhood while waiting out World War II with his aunt, both of them disguised as Christians. Their harrowing efforts to escape detection by the Germans made for a powerful debut by a writer who took up the pen in late middle age after spending his entire adult life working as a lawyer.

Begley's admission that Maciek's story paralleled his own experience in general terms gave additional weight to the book's central theme of deception and the terrible price paid for the loss of one's identity. The nameless middle-aged narrator who...