Louis Begley (born Ludwik Begleiter; October 6, 1933) is a Polish-born Jewish American novelist. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical Holocaust novel Wartime Lies (1991) and the Schmidt trilogy: About Schmidt (1996), Schmidt Delivered (2000) and Schmidt Steps Back (2012). Life Early life Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi, then part of the Polish Republic and now in Ukraine, the only child of a physician. Using forged identity papers that enabled them to pretend to be Polish Catholics, he and his mother survived the Nazi occupation in which many Polish Jews were killed. He lived with his mother at first in Lwów, and then in Warsaw until the end of the August 1944 Warsaw uprising. By the time World War II ended, they were in Kraków, where they were reunited with Begley’s father. During the school year 1945/46, Begley attended the Jan Sobieski school in Kraków. It was his first experience of formal instruction since kindergarten during the Soviet occupation of Stryi, which followed the German invasion of western Poland in 1939. The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 for Paris and, in late February 1947, left Paris for New York City, arriving on March 3. Shortly afterward, the family name was changed from Begleiter to Begley. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, Begley studied English literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude), where he worked at The Advocate, an undergraduate literary magazine. Service in the United States Army followed, the last 18 months of it in Göppingen, Germany, with the 9th Division. Family In 1956, Begley married Sally Higginson (1928-2017). They divorced in May 1970. In March 1974, Begley married his present wife, Anka Muhlstein, a historian and biographer born in Paris. Begley has three children: painter and sculptor Peter Begley, writer Adam Begley, and novelist and art historian Amey Larmore (who writes under the pen name Laura Moore) He also has two stepsons from Muhlstein’s previous marriage: Robert Dujarric, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan Campus in Tokyo, and Stéphane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Career Lawyer In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School. Upon his graduation in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude), he joined the New York firm now known as Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate. He became a partner January 1, 1968, while serving