Product Description

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15630 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-07
• Released on: 1999-03-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com
Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"

The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis

From School Library Journal
YA. Michael Berg, 15, is on his way home from high school in post-World War II Germany when he becomes ill and is befriended by a woman who takes him home. When he recovers from hepatitis many weeks later, he dutifully takes the 40-year-old Hanna flowers in appreciation, and the two become lovers. The relationship, at first purely physical, deepens when Hanna takes an interest in the young man's education, insisting that he study hard and attend classes. Soon, meetings take on a more meaningful routine in which after lovemaking Michael reads aloud from the German classics. There are hints of Hanna's darker side: one inexplicable moment of violence over a minor misunderstanding, and the fact that the boy knows nothing of her life other than that she collects tickets on the streetcar. Content with their arrangement, Michael is only too willing to overlook Hanna's secrets. She leaves the city abruptly and mysteriously, and he does not see her again until, as a law student, he sits in on her case when she is being tried as a Nazi criminal. Only then does it become clear that Hanna is illiterate and her inability to read and her false pride have contributed to her crime and will affect her sentencing. The theme of good versus evil and the question of moral responsibility are eloquently presented in this spare coming-of-age story that's sure to inspire questions and passionate discussion.?Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
After falling ill on the street in the German town where he lives, 15-year-old Michael is helped by a woman named Hanna. When he returns to her apartment to thank her several months later, he begins a passionate love affair with her. In time, she demands that he read aloud to her before they make love, and they essay some of Germany's and the world's great literature together. One day, however, Hanna disappears without saying farewell, and Michael grieves and believes it to be his fault. He finds her again years later when, as a law student, he encounters her as the defendant in a court case. To reveal more of the plot would be unfair, but this very readable novel by German author Schlink probes the nature of love, guilt, and responsibility while painting a sympathetic portrait of Michael and an achingly complex picture of Hanna. Recommended for most collections.?Michael T. O'Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Will make you think!
I started reading this book knowing very little about it other than its reviews calling it "beautiful" "disturbing" "morally devastating" and "speaks straight to the heart." Although perhaps not as disturbing or morally devastating as some reviews claim, I did find the story to be beautiful and one that spoke to my heart. I found myself truly caring about the characters, however bizarre they were (and the strange relationships they were part of).

Anyone interested in post-war Germany and the aftermath of the Holocaust would enjoy this book. I found myself wondering several times whether this was a piece of non-fiction, considering how it certainly reads that way (it IS fiction, however).

The print is fairly large and the pages narrow. I read this book in one day easily. I was drawn into the story easily. The questions of morality, ethics, and philosophy that this book brings up left me thinking long after putting this book down.

Abuse is not romance
This book is an oddity. Its international success is a complete surprise to me. The fact that it has provoked over 760 reviews here with a broad and even spectrum of responses demonstrates that it hits a nerve. Many different ones actually.
I like Schlink as a writer of detective novels. He invented a great PI, an aging reformed Nazi called Selb, a name which enabled great titles like Selbs Justiz or Selbs Mord. A writer and a hero with their hearts on the right spot, with interesting cases in post war Germany.
But the Reader is something else. The story is 'simple' enough: a teenage boy has a love affair with an older woman, a tram ticket collector; part of the charm of the affair is that the boy reads to the woman after sex. Then they lose contact when she moves away. Later, he is a student at university, he finds out that she is an accused in a Nazi trial, she was a KZ guard, and it becomes apparent that she is illiterate, and too proud to admit it. She can not even read the dossier of the prosecution.
Which reminds me of Monty Python's Meaning of Life: the fish in the aquarium in the restaurant watch the guests eating fish and ask themselves in excitement: what does it mean? Exactly. What is Schlink's point? Till now I have no clue.
Are the Nazi criminals just illiterates too proud to admit their lack of education? That can't be it, obviously, so what is 'it'?
Schlink pokes into a deep well of ambiguity, but there ends his contribution. He goes no further in clarifying anything. What do we conclude from his story? I wish I knew.

Guilty
Although highly recommended it took me a while to finally read this book. The story seemed too hard to me, but anyway I read it.
It is a very compelling book . The style is clean and direct without, apparently, any concesion to warmth. But at the end just as Hanna accepts her culpability the reader understands the feelings hidden in the remembrances of Michael.
Hanna as a character is not specially sympathetic but the diference is that we can see her as a a human being while for her the prisioners were nothing. Maybe the book is so attractive because we can develope that humanity to someone who did inhuman things.