There are some books you know will stay with you forever, and Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is definitely one of them. It has been highly critically acclaimed, winning the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, and it deserves all the praise it has received.

The Holocaust is a difficult, though much covered, subject matter, and this novel has a sure touch and an appealing lack of judgment with it. The story begins in the world of almost-childhood of fifteen-year-old Michael Berg, recovering from a summer of hepatitis, begins a relationship with Hanna, a much older woman he meets by chance. The first part of the novel, untouched by the shadow of the recent war or Germany's disturbed and dangerous past, deals with Michael and Hanna's burgeoning relationship, and the little fears and worries that can make up one big problem. Eventually, as we know it must, their relationship ends and Hanna moves away.

When the book moves on to the second part, the tone has changed considerably. Michael, now a law student, attends the trial of female Nazi war criminals. To his shock, one of them is Hanna, who had been a camp guard at Auschwitz. I won't say more for fear of spoiling it for you, but the Holocaust is seriously considered in the light of philosophy and moral responsibility. There is an attitude that one becomes numb to the horror of it all if too exposed to it, and this book does not go into ghastly detail, but rather examines even more painful details: who was to blame, how do we live with the suffering, how can one atone, and most of all, what is the next generation to do?

It also looks at what it means to love someone, how much we can accept of them and how blind we can be to those we love. Love, guilt and betrayal feature prominently in this novel.

In many ways Hanna was innocent, and yet it becomes apparent that she lived every day with terrible guilt; Michael was a victim of her actions, and yet he too is guilty by association. The reader of the title is Michael, who read to Hanna during the early part of the relationship; the reader is Hanna, alone in prison occupying herself by learning about the experiences of camp inmates. The reader is selected individuals in the camps who read aloud to Hanna, and may have died because of it. But most of all, the reader is ourselves; the title points the finger at us, because now we have the knowledge, what should we do with it? If all it takes for evil to prevail is for the good to remain silent, then how innocent are any of us? And how can we deal with the subsequent guilt? There are so many layers to this subtly complex novel that having just finished it, I have to start it again. The transforming power of words is negated by their ultimate futility, and actions in this novel speak deafeningly loud.

If we have a responsibility towards the past, to learn from it, and I believe we do, then this book will help us to go some way towards fulfilling it.

This is not a book that I wanted to read. So many times while reading books about the Holocaust, I feel a disconnectedness from the events. It's a mixture of two things. The first is that the sheer scope of events is just too large, too horrific, for one person's words to do justice to it. The second, and this could partly be due to the first problem, is that I detest being manipulated by my books. With a lot of Holocaust literature the villains are stock characters; the malevolent Colonel with no humanity, staring cold-eyed at the prisoners before sending them off to their deaths. I find this to be a drastic over-simplification of the tragedy and one with a great potential for allowing such a dehumanizing event to occur again.

It's simple to hate Count Dracula or Emperor Palpatine. They have no identity aside from their thirst for power and willingness to inflict any cruelty for any whim. They are a delightfully uncomplicated type, divorced from standard concepts of morality- purely evil. Nazis, quite understandably, get tarred in this same way. We see the pictures of bodies stacked hundreds of feet high at Bergen-Belsen, the haunted eyes staring out past barbed wire, the jackboots marching in lockstep, The Triumph of the Will- these are all images etched into the collective memory. No civilized person could do such a thing, the mind recoils. These are not people but demons brought to Earth. This is a phenomenal disservice to those who suffered so horrifically at their hands. How can we properly work to prevent such a travesty from ever occurring again when we choose to reject these people from the human community? We need to understand what can move someone to such a place that pushing the button to fill a shower with Zyklon B is just another day at the office. We need to see how easy it is to give in to what Hannah Arendt dubbed the "banality of evil." To recognize those aspects within ourselves and then to strive to work against them constantly. Allowing Nazis to become human in our mind does not excuse any of the crimes they committed. Rather it opens us up to the understanding that the same potential exists in all of us. When we understand this, that we all have the capability of becoming something monstrous simply through acquiescing to the dominant trends in society, by going with the flow, only then can we truly make strides in guaranteeing the truth of the mantra "Never Again."

And it is easy, this acquiescence. It is as easy as taking a new job to avoid having a shameful secret found out at an old one. The next thing you know you're guarding prisoners at a work camp. From there, it's just another small step to selecting who gets shipped back to Auschwitz and who stays. The option for rebellion doesn't even raise its head; either you do the task or someone else will, raise a fuss and you may just find yourself on the train with them. Next step you find yourself standing outside a flaming church, hundreds of women locked inside and, though you have a key, you do nothing simply because nobody told you to and to release the women would mean to set them free (which was definitely verboten). That's all it takes. A simple abdication of responsibility and 300 women cook within the stone walls. Please believe, understanding does not equal forgiveness. It does not mean you have to like that person one iota, but an effort should be made to see how such things are possible- how each decision moved them further and further down the road to the Nuremberg Tribunal. Yet, as Schlink's main character, Hanna Schmitz, asks in especially gripping moment, "What would you have done?" How do you get off that merry-go-round when its already spinning? Delightfully, the author does not hand the reader a satisfactory answer, for what possible answer could there be?

The book was not all death, doom and gloom. That's just the bit that struck me the hardest, because the author built such an affinity between myself and Hanna. Seduction via literature has to be my favorite thing ever and the early scenes where this takes place were some of the most tightly coiled eroticism I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Later, when the scope of what Hanna has done becomes clear, the reader, much like the young narrator, must reconcile his affection for her with these revelations. It's a struggle, to be sure, but one that helps make The Reader one of the most impacting books I've yet read.

This is the deep character development and type of writing that i've been craving. A book that made me think and ask so many questions. Sometimes I felt like I was struggling through really heavy writing, but the actual story itself and the moral questions that arise from its telling were really, really interesting and I surprised myself with how much I found myself contemplating this novel. Someone told me there's a movie with Kate Winslet and she is my actual wife so i'm gonna go track that down bye

An excellent story, which has remained with me for more than a decade.

Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Džinovska, guseničasta reč za „suočavanje sa prošlošću”. A kad je Nemačka u pitanju svi dobro znamo sa kojom i kakvom prošlošću.
Njoj pripada i Šlinkov roman, ali, čini mi se, na drugačiji način nego što mnogi misle. A, koliko vidim, govori se o dve krajnosti: ili da je u pitanju bolna ljubavna priča ili razračunavanje sa kolektivnom traumom spakovano u alegoriju o nepismenoj junakinji.
Sa bolnom ljubavnom pričom lako je poistovetiti se, a alegorija je nešto neprozirnija i njeno potencijalno razrešenje je da čitanje može spasiti svet, odnosno, da duše zatrovane neznanjem mogu da izvrše zločine.

E sad, ovako izložena idejna struktura dela ne deluje kao nešto ushićujuće, međutim, ja odavno nisam svaku rečenicu ovako upijao i zaista me odavno nije nešto tako lično prodrmalo. A da sve bude još čudnije, to se uopšte ne tiče Holokausta ili odnosa između petnaestogodišnjaka i žene u zrelim godinama, već zbog neke bubnjeće skučenosti što ulazi pod kožu. I uopšte nisam razmišljao o krivici, niti razlozima, već mi je, nekako, bilo svega žao. Na posletku niko ni do koga nije dopro.

I baš ne znam – Šlink mi je istovremeno sve: i do srži uverljiva priča i neuverljiva priča i talas emocija i kutija sa lutkicama. A verovatno je i dobro što je tako.

Nisam proveravao, ali sigurno postoji i audio-verzija ove knjige, što bi celoj priči dalo jedan zanimljiv obrt. Ko pročita, videće na šta smeram.

Film po romanu nisam gledao, ali sam zato pre koju nedelju, sasvim slučajno naleteo na „Werk ohne Author” od Donesmarka. Moćan film! Smerano trans-epohalan i razračunavajuć sa prošlostima. Kome se Šlink svideo, ovo će tek.

booring. is that a review?? this was just very flat to me. i wasn't offended by the subject matter - i could care less about the "scandalous" elements. but the writing was so clinical and thin. at one point, i blamed the translation, but c'mon - its not that hard to translate german to english (i can't do it, of course, but it's supposed to be one of the easiest translations) i have nothing helpful to say about this except i was bored bored bored. the characters were unappealing, the "twists" were ho-hum, and i thought it very dry .i don't know what oprah was thinking...



come to my blog!

There have been many ways over the years in which literature has found a path to deal with the Holocaust and its consequences, but a book about the inability to be able to read might not seem the most obvious. Yet in terms of attracting a mass audience, something that Schlink has clearly done, this German novel with illiteracy at its heart published back in the mid-90's, has been a phenomenon amongst readers.

Bernhard Schlink's forth and easily most popular novel opens in post-war Germany when a teenage boy, Michael Berg (who also narrates), embarks on a love affair with a thirty-something woman, Hanna, who disappears, then years later turns up in the dock as a former concentration camp guard accused of the mass murder of Jewish women locked in a burning church. Michael, by now a law student observing the trial, realises that Hanna is a secret illiterate, a fact that has profoundly affected her actions in the past as well as fatally undermining her defence in court. Schlink says that writing about illiteracy "was there when I started to think about the book. I did a great deal of research into it, but I never had an objective beyond telling that story. I'm sure the things I think about and worry about in other contexts play into the stories I write. But I do not know how they do that, and I'm really uninterested in the epistemology of my writing." The theme certainly chimes, in terms of dramatically echoing the Third Reich's moral illiteracy, but the way the book has been enthusiastically taken up and used almost as documentary points to an impact that has far exceeded Schlink's immediate narrative ambitions.

The hapless Hanna, conscientiously unscrupulous in the performance of her labor-camp duties, committed crimes against humanity, obviously. But what of the young law student who denies her his word, his aid? The paralyzing shame, the psychic numbing, the moral failures of the lucky late-born are the novel's central focus. Nazi holdovers in postwar Germany are denounced only at the margins of the story, so to speak. But this oblique approach has its own power. In one quietly disturbing scene, Michael visits the nearest concentration camp, Struthof, in Alsace that had a sign on it indicating that it had been a gas chamber. But Schlink spares his readers the sickening details.

Literature is not only a bridge between the generations, sometimes it may get closer to the truth of recent history than benumbed eyewitness accounts. But this redemptive magic has its limits. Substituting great books for human contact is a cowardly dodge. At the novel's somber conclusion, Michael betrays Hanna yet again. On Hanna though, if one would call this more holocaust literature
than a legal thriller with sex in it, then criticism of the book, from people who treat it as Holocaust literature, are right to say that Schlink doesn't come to a proper judgment of Hanna. Schlink acknowledges that he has been criticised for not unambiguously condemning Hanna. Is this fair? I think his novel can be open to so many interpretations. Guess that's part of it's appeal.

All this aside, I just found the novel top to bottom rather bland. It brings up many questions, yes, and for the most part it at least held my curiosity. But seeing that it sold in huge numbers I expected much more. Maybe it's shortish length didn't help, it felt like not enough pages are actually given to alluding as to the true horrors of Hanna's crimes and the rest of it is simply the diatribe and musings of a teenage boy. Maybe I am missing the point? As books about the legacy of the holocaust go, there are much better ones out there than this. I will also say I much preferred the film over the book. With Kate Winslet giving a tour-de-force performance as Hanna.

I can’t find the right superlative..This pushed so many buttons for me.

The sexual coming of age of a young boy and his wonderfully drawn relationship with an older woman. (It brought back memories of an early crush when about the same age as Michael, here). Set in the aftermath of WW2 in Germany. Coping with national guilt, its effect on relationships between the generations. I found the ending predictable but that is in no way a criticism. An inspirational read which I now want to re-visit.

Lust, love, obsession, or compulsion?

15 year old Michael falls in love with 36 year old Hanna. They make love and he reads to her every night. He questions his actions and Hanna's reactions, his faults and hers. He can't decide who is at blame.

Years later, she is on trial for the choices she made prior to meeting Michael. He watches from a distance, still questioning who she is to him.

Mercy and longing saturate this book. Novels that make me feel something are rare. This one took me somewhere.

Este é um livro pequeno mas bastante intenso, que levanta questões morais e reflexões sobre culpa e perdão, sobre a dicotomia entre o bem e o mal, sobre arrependimento e esquecimento.

Para mim foi particularmente interessante pensar naquilo que foi ser alemão na geração pós-guerra. Os filhos dos adultos que viveram a Segunda Guerra Mundial foram sendo confrontados, ao longo do seu crescimento, com as atrocidades cometidas pelos nazis. Alguns ter-se-ão questionado relativamente aos papéis e atitudes que os mais velhos, os seus familiares ou outros, tiveram durante a guerra. Outros terão, provavelmente, preferido ignorar. Esta geração, a que o autor do livro pertence, foi a geração responsável por julgar os crimes cometidos na guerra.

Qual foi o sentimento dos civis, ou dos que tiveram papéis subalternos durante a guerra, soldados, guardas, que continuaram as suas vidas depois da guerra? Viveram com medo, com vergonha, com remorsos ou tentavam esquecer? Alguns, continuaram a achar que a razão estava do seu lado, ou que apenas cumpriram ordens, ou que nada podiam ter feito.

A relação que se estabelece entre Hanna e Michael é desiquilibrada e abusiva. Esta mulher, vinte e um anos mais velha, exerce o seu poder sobre o miúdo, de 15 anos, usando a sexualidade para o cativar e para obter dele o que procura. Michael torna-se seu amante e seu leitor. Descobriremos mais tarde que Hanna já tinha tido outros leitores, noutras circunstâncias em que o seu poder era exercido de outras formas.

Algum tempo depois, Hanna desaparece sem aviso. Michael volta a encontrá-la, anos mais tarde, num julgamento em que ela é uma das réus. Depois de assistir ao julgamento e de ouvir a sentença, Michael percebe que Hanna lhe deixou marcas profundas e vai continuar presente na sua vida até ao fim. É possível perdoar sem compreender? A compaixão é possível sem o perdão?

Gostei muito deste livro pelas questões morais e filosóficas que aborda, não procurando fazer juízos de valor, mas sim, instigando reflexões. Talvez um dia destes me apeteça ver o filme.

Aside from throwing light on lesser known post-war ramifications of the Nazi regime, this short, compact book surprised me with the number of moral, ethical and behavioral conundrums that it posed. These conundrums, if explored do not lead to answers but might lead to a sense of improved understanding - an understanding that is not limited to Nazi crimes, but can be applied to a whole host of mass crimes and post-war genocides where exploration isn't even an option. Bernhard Schlink's prose is spare and austere, not even a single sentence is wasted in building any unnecessary or irrelevant imagery or dialogue. So altogether the book does make a sound impact in the short time it takes one to read it.

Couldn't resist watching the movie after reading it, and I'd say its one of those rare movies that are rendered from the book with remarkably high fidelity. And needless to say Kate Winslet aced it!

ETA: I am a bit of a perfectionist. I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed some detail, so I listened to parts two and three again. It was not boring listening a second time; the writing is beautiful and there is so much to ponder. It is about the holocaust so do not expect an easy, light read! It is about second generation Germans and how they view their parents and their actions during the war. This is done with both honesty and humility; it is an important issue to address. The central topic remains the role shame and guilt play in people's lives.

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I listened to "The Reader" in a hypo (low blood sugar) all afternoon. I know everything that happened, and I cannot decide if I should re-listen to the whole dam thing. It is not disgusting, like I thought it would be. The boy and the woman LOVE each other. You don't think about the age difference. It has great lines that make you think. The sexual relationship is simply part of two people reaching out to each other. This book is about guilt and shame and what it will push people to do. I think this book will appeal to people that seem strong, but in fact are quite insecure. It will appeal to people who are ashamed of their own inadequacies. They will relate to the boy/man and the woman. It is also about the guilt Germans feel after WW2. I am very glad I read this book. No, I listened to it. Good narration by Campbell Scott.