The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Kornfeld, Melvin. Jacob the Liar. Arcade Publishing, 2012.

The book is framed as a recounting of a story from a man who survived the Holocaust 20 years ago. This man lived in the same ghetto as Jacob and wants to tell his story to the reader. Throughout the novel, this narrator often interrupts his own story to go on side tangents about his own life and other smaller characters within the narrative.

The novel’s action begins with Jacob being taken into custody to the military barracks in his ghetto. As a Jew in Nazi occupied Poland, Jacob has no rights and is sent to the barracks likely to be sent to a death camp after allegedly staying out past curfew. Jacob soon discovered that he did not violate the curfew and can go free. He also hears a radio in the barracks. Jews are not allowed radios, so Jacob has no information about the outside world. He learns that the Russians are winning a battle only 200 miles away, meaning his city may be liberated soon.

Jacob begins spreading this news to the others, starting with a friend of his named Mischa. But, in order to make the news seem more reliable, he lies and says that he heard it from a radio which he illicitly owns. Although Mischa promises to not tell the rest of the ghetto’s inhabitants about where the news came from, the secret gets out and people start perstering Jacob for more information. Perhaps the most eager consumer of Jacob’s news is his old friend Kowalski, who insists that he help his friend at the railyard every day so he can hear the next big scoop.

In order to satisfy the information-hungry masses, Jacob starts fabricating more lies about where battles are taking place. Due to his creativity failing him, he becomes so desperate for information that he even steals a newspaper from a German guard which would have had severe consequences if Kowalski had not stepped in as a distraction.

Over time, Jacob feels physically stressed by having to maintain the lie for the rest of the community, he feels even more guilt when Herschel Schtamm, a man who doubted him, gives his life trying to spread the lie to Jews imprisoned in a boxcar being sent to the death camps. He starts trying to lie to the community by telling them that the radio is broken or otherwise on the fritz. However, when he does so they persist with Kowalski finding someone capable of repairing the radio.

Eventually, Jacob confesses to Kowalski that it was all a lie, causing Kowalski to kill himself in despair. The book has two endings, one invented by the narrator and another real. In the fiction, Jacob sacrifices himself trying to dig under the ghetto’s fence to get more information to improve morale the day before the city is liberated by the Red Army, meaning all the characters are saved. However, the narrator reveals the truth is far bleaker. The ghetto’s residents are deported to a death camp where most of them, including Jacob, presumably die.