This book will haunt you and never leave you alone. Fantastic read. One of my alltime favourites. There is also a movie with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes I can also recommend. Absolutely spellbinding.

There will always be some substantial gaps among peoples. This gap, however, is not of caste or class or gender. It is the gap of shallowed empathetic experience. The Reader is about this gap. It is about the mystery of what something must have felt like and this 'something' in the book is Holocaust. Michael Berg, the narrator, is the 'second generation' of the Holocaust. His relationship with an older woman, one of the SS guards at the Nazi camp, is the relationship of the 'first generation' with the 'second'. The novel questions what the second generation would do. This question, like Hanna's question to the judge (". . . so what would you have done?"), lingers and floats in mid-air.

The novel is packed in many intricate and complex layers. It leaves many questions that will remain unanswered; at least, in my case, the questions are still wavering around. I have no hopes of ever finding any answer. As I said, there will always be the gaps of shallowed empathetic experience.

Das Buch hat mich auf den letzten 50 Seiten komplett gebrochen. Lange nicht mehr so intensiv geweint. Würde sagen, dass das bis jetzt mein Lieblingsbuch 2024 ist. Ich könnte jetzt noch viel über Schuldgefühle und Vergebung schreiben, aber mir fehlen gerade die Worte dafür. Kann das Buch nur wärmstens empfehlen!❤️