The Little Liar: A Novel

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with his most important novel to date, an unforgettable story of truth and lies set during the Holocaust.

Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading “north,” where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day.

But when the final train is loaded, Nico sees his family being herded into a boxcar. Only then does he discover that he has helped send them—and everyone he knows and loves—to their doom at Auschwitz.

Nico escapes—but he never tells the truth again.

In The Little Liar, Mitch Albom examines the human repercussions of deception by interweaving the stories of Nico, who yearns for forgiveness; his older brother, Sebastian, who vows revenge against him; Fannie, the girl who must choose between them; and Udo Graf, the Nazi officer who forever changed their lives with his lies.

Through the war years, the concentration camps, and the decades that follow, Albom reveals the consequences of each person’s honesty and dishonesty, bringing them back to where it all started in a staggering climax worthy of the best of Albom’s internationally embraced stories.

 

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352 pages

Average rating: 8.44

253 RATINGS

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14 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

mg.happyhooker🧶
Mar 17, 2025
10/10 stars
Wow what a story! I loved everything about this book and the way in which it was written. Making the narrator omnipresent is not unusual, However, claiming the narrator to be truth itself, not just an observer, but truth ... what a concept! I also appreciated reading about a WWII story from a non-allied country's POV. I knew nothing about how WWII had affected Greece and other smaller central European countries.

This story follows the intertwined paths of four people. Seeing how their stories are connected through the years, without their knowledge that their actions cemented the inevitable outcomes of their lives was beautiful and devastating, all at the same time. I loved Truth's interjections throughout the story, using parables to drive a point that would be harder to understand using only the truth.

Truly a story worth reading!
Kpatte4
Jan 16, 2025
9/10 stars
Really good, very sad.
Anonymous
Jan 14, 2025
10/10 stars
I have read a lot of holocaust/WW2 books and I am always amazed that there are still fresh takes on this topic. The Little Liar is arguably my favorite book of 2024. Narrated by Truth, this novel tells the story of one town in Greece that went from a population of 50,000 Jews down to 2,000. Highly recommend.
Anonymous
Dec 11, 2024
10/10 stars
Absolutely fascinatingly told story that I adored. I couldn’t stop listening to it; but I almost didn’t. I think after the first minute I stopped. I didn’t want to hear any other stories about the Holocaust right now…then later that day I came back to it and I’m so glad I did! Excellent character development, fascinating plots, wonderfully rich, interesting, and captivating stories. This was a tremendous book.
Eliza S-R
Oct 20, 2024
8/10 stars
This book tugged at all my heart strings.

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