A Special Edition of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink to celebrate Orion's 20th anniversary.
One of my favourite books of 1998, the sort that, on completion, leaves you stunned and really does stay with you for – well, in my case – years as it was 10 years ago that I read it. That sensation of admiration is still with me. Clever, beautifully written, short, stark and hard-hitting, it is a tale of sex, guilt and shame with the holocaust raising its ugly head in an original and alarming way.
For fifteen-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. 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?
The Reader is an international bestseller and a true modern classic, examining the gap between Germany's pre- and post-war generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence.
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany is 1944. A professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin and Cardozo Law School, New York, he is the author of the major international bestselling novel and movie The Reader, short story collection Flights of Love and several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Berlin and New York.
