The Little Liar

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the novel’s depictions of genocide, antisemitism, and extreme violence.

“Humans can only be trusted to watch out for themselves. When threatened, they will destroy anything to survive, especially me. But I am the shadow you cannot outrun, the mirror that holds your final reflection.”

From the beginning of the novel, the narrator, as the personification of truth, explains that humans often bend the truth when they feel that who they are or what they believe in is threatened. Here, the narrator uses metaphors that compare the nature of truth to that of a shadow and a mirror, implying that truth itself is inescapable no matter how much humans try to hide from it.

“But with Nico, I offer you a story of consequence, one that heretofore has never been told. It concerns deception, great deception, but also great truth, and heartbreak and war and family and revenge and love, the kind of love that is tested over and over.”

Truth foreshadows the events that take place in the rest of the novel by framing the story as a parable. A parable is a story that uses symbolism to illustrate a moral lesson. In the case of The Little Liar, the moral of the story in question emphasizes the damage that lies can cause even as it advocates for healing past wounds through forgiveness.

“But there is always a purpose to cruelty. The Germans wanted to change me. They wanted the Jews of Salonika to accept a new version of the Truth, one in which there was no freedom, no faith, and no hope. Only Nazi rule.”

Truth explains that the Nazis wanted to create a twisted version of the truth to enforce their beliefs. One of the most significant themes that is discussed within the novel is the destruction and aftermath of the Holocaust. Here, the author demonstrates that the Nazis’ intentions were to destroy Jewish culture and lives by redefining the truth in such a way that their acts of cruelty would usurp the position of law, poisoning whole countries with the shadow of atrocity.