The Reader

by Bernhard Schlink (Author), Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)

• Used

  Mass Market Paperback
  2011

  $6.04

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.22

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $4.15

  The novel traces the relationship between a German lawyer, Michael and an older woman, Hanna. Beginning with their brief affair when he is fifteen in post-war Germany, going on to narrate his discovery as a law student that Hanna had been a guard at a satellite camp attatched to Aushwitz - for which she is imprisoned. Schlink explores questions of guilt, deciet, betrayal and memory, against the backdrop of Germany's complex and equivocal response to the Holocaust. It is an immensely subtle and morally sophisticated novel, constantly playing with thereader's sympathies in a way that is profoundly thought-provoking and disturbing

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $12.16

  'A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience' [Independent on Saturday] 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.