Reading Holocaust fiction at the end of the twentieth century: 'Jakob the liar' and 'Life is beautiful'

This essay explores the way that two twentieth century movie texts - 'Jakob the liar' and 'Life is beautiful' - have created narratives in which redemption and hope are understood to be the natural consequences of trauma, whereas earlier texts, such as East German Jurek Becker's novel 'Jakob the liar', stubbornly remind the reader time and again, that mass murder does not inspire optimism and hope in the survivors, In the novel there is also no redemptive hope for the dead.