XStream fails to unmarshal my JSON string and I do not know why?
Deserialization of JSON is currently done by Jettison, that transforms the JSON string into a StAX stream. XStream itself does nothing know about the JSON format here. If your JSON string reaches some kind of complexity and you do not know how to design your Java objects and configure XStream to match those, you should have a look at the intermediate XML that is processed by XStream in the end. This might help to identify the problematic spots. Also consider then marshalling your Java objects into XML first.