BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

The Reader

by Bernhard Schlink · 1995

Literary Fiction · ranked #171 in category

Fifteen-year-old Michael Berg in postwar Germany has an affair with Hanna Schmitz, a tram conductor twenty years his senior, who asks him to read aloud to her. Years later he discovers her in a war crimes trial, and realises what the reading meant and what she was hiding. Schlink's novella is one of the most read and most debated books about German guilt, literacy and the generation born after the Holocaust.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
1995 · 1990s
Author
Bernhard Schlink
Standing
Essential Read

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