Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi at the time part of Poland and now in Ukraine, as the only child of a physician. Using forged identity papers that enabled them to pretend to be Polish Catholics, his mother and he survived the almost wholly successful German attempt to kill all Polish Jews.

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 gimnazjum in Kraków. It was his first experience of formal instruction.

The family left Poland in the fall of 1946 for Paris and, in late February 1947, left Paris for New York, arriving March 3, 1947. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, Begley studied English Literature at Harvard College (AB '54, summa cum laude). Service in the United States Army followed, the last eighteen months of it in Göppingen, Germany, with the 9th Division. In 1956 Begley entered Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1959 (LL.B. magna cum laude). Also in 1956, Begley married Sally Higginson. They were divorced in May, 1970.

Upon graduation from Law School, Begley joined the New York firm now known as Debevoise & Plimpton as an associate. He became a partner January 1, 1968, while serving at the newly established Paris office. Upon his return to New York, Begley headed for many years the firm’s international practice. He retired from the firm on January 1, 2004.

In March 1974, Begley married his present wife, Anka Muhlstein, born in Paris. A historian and biographer, Anka has been honored twice by the French Academy’s prize for history, for her biographies of the eighteenth century explorer, Cavelier de La Salle, and James de Rothschild, the founder of the French Rothschild bank, and has received the Goncourt prize for biography for her work on the French writer Custine, which is available in English as A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine. Anka’s other works are Par les yeux de Marcel Proust, Denoël, 1971, La Femme Soleil, Denoël, 1976, Victoria, Gallimard, 1978, Manhattan, Grasset, 1986, Reines éphémères, Mères perpétuelles, Albin Michel, 2001, Les Périls du Mariage, Albin Michel, 2004, and Napoléon à Moscou, Odile Jacob, 2007. Her Garcon, un cent d’huîtres, La Table chez Balzac, a study of the role of gastronomy in the novels of Balzac, will be published by Editions Odile Jacob in 2010, and by Arche Verlag (Hamburg) early in 2011.

Begley has three children:

Peter Begley, a painter and a sculptor, lives in Paris. Peter is married to Anne Bazin-Begley, a French specialist in Central European international relations. They have two children, Jacob and Elisabeth.

Adam Begley, a writer, lives in Northamptonshire, England. He is married to Anne Cotton. He is currently working on a biography of John Updike, to be published by Harper Collins.

Begley’s daughter Amey, a novelist and art historian, is married to Charles Larmore, W. Duncan MacMillan Professor of Philosophy, at Brown University. They have two children, Nicholas and Julia. The family lives in Providence, R.I.. Under her pen name Laura Moore, Amey is the author of five novels.

Begley’s stepchildren, are Anka’s sons:

Robert Dujarric is the director of the Institute for Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan Campus, in Tokyo. He lives in Tokyo.

Stéphane Dujarric is the Director of Communications, United Nations Development Program, Partnership Bureau. Steph is married to Ilaria Quadrani, a private dealer in master drawings. They live in New York City, with their daughter Isabella and sons Henri and Julien.

• Wartime Lies (1991)
• The Man Who Was Late (1993)
• As Max Saw It (1994)
• About Schmidt (1996)
• Mistler's Exit (1998)
• Schmidt Delivered (2000)
• Shipwreck (2003)
• Matters of Honor (2007)

All of Begley’s novels have been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and republished by Ballantine Publishing Company. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages.

In 2001, a selection of LB's essays and journalistic pieces was published by Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt) under the title Das Gelobte Land.

Venedig Unter Vier Augen, a book on Venetian themes by Anka Muhlstein and Louis Begley, was published in 2003 by Marebuch Verlag (Hamburg). It was also published in English in 2005 by Haus Publishing under the title Venice for Lovers, and reissued under the same title by Grove Press in the U.S..

Zwischen Fakten und Fiktionen, the text of LB's lectures given as part of Poetik Dozentur at Heidelberg University in November 2006, was published by Suhrkamp in January 2008.

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head, Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay was published by Atlas & Co. in 2008.

Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters was published by Yale University Press in 2009.

Prizes and awards include: The Irish Times-Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics’ Circle Finalist, PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award, Prix Médicis Étranger, Jeanette-Schocken-Pries, Bemerhavener Bürgerpreis für Literatur, American Academy of Letters Award in Literature, and Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung Literaturpreis.

From 1993 to 1995, Begley was president of PEN American Center. He served on PEN's board of directors from 1992-2001.

He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a past member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres Philosophical Society.

The University of Heidelberg has conferred on him the honorary degree D. Phil.