Lies in Times of War tells the story of a childhood in Poland. Maciek, the son of Jewish parents, grows up in the 1930s in a sheltered environment within a wealthy physician's household, until the autumn of 1939 suddenly changes the fate of his family. Louis Begley narrates in his debut novel the story of our century, a tale that is depicted here in the sometimes fairy-tale, sometimes brutally simple words of young Maciek.