For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does - Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.
Reviews
"A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel. From the first page, [The Reader] enshares both heart and mind." Los Angeles Times
"This novel has become famous as one of the most piercingly intelligent examinations of the dark cloud which still hangs over Germany - the cloud of guilt for the Holocaust, felt sometimes unconsciously by a generation whose parents or grandparents were, however indirectly, involved. After the Second World War, Michael, a German schoolboy, gets to know a woman bus conductor who seduces him and leads him into a world of joyous sensuality shadowed only by the uncertainty of her temper. She encourages him to read to her - and it is only when he realizes that she is illiterate that their relationship becomes a little clearer, but not more stable. They lose touch with each other, and when, as a university student, he attends a war crimes tribunal, he sees her in the dock. The story is almost simplistic, the narrative as clear and unsentimental as the style. The reader is drawn into the story slowly but powerfully, empathizing strongly with the narrator, Michael. The way in which he feels his way towards forgiveness not only for his former mistress, but for himself, is the kernel of an extraordinary book which weds philosophy and narrative seamlessly, clearly illuminating the tangled motives which lie behind our ignorance and our censure." (Kirkus UK)
"Its power to shock, to move profoundly, arises from its absolute narrative logic and humanity. The reviewer's sole fuction is to say as loudly as he is able "Read this" and "Read it again." George Steiner, The Observer
Author Biography
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany in 1944. He is a professor of law at the University of Berlin and a practising judge. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.
