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Preview — Liebesfluchten by Bernhard Schlink

Flights of Love sees Bernhard Schlink build on the success of his international bestselling debut novel, The Reader, with a clutch of short stories that tell of the variety of love, distilled into seven splinters of narrative. The pick of the seven, the opening 'Girl with Lizard,' depicts a remote male character who fixates on a painting of his father's, which he is to dis...more
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May 06, 2019Connie G rated it liked it · review of another edition
'Flights of Love' is a collection of seven short stories that center on love. These are not sweet, sentimental stories since the protagonists are German men, mostly lawyers or law students, that view their emotions with cool, analytic minds. The stories are about communication problems, love that has lost passion, regrets, and midlife crisis mentalities. A few stories deal with the way that people regard younger Germans (who were not alive during World War II) because the Holocaust had such deva...more
Mar 25, 2012Emma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I have never really been one for short stories. Something in them doesn't suit me and they generally leave me with a feeling of dissatisfaction. This collection, by Bernhard Schlink of The Reader fame, could not have made me feel more different. With the thread running through them all, these stories examines our shared, fundamental desire to find love but the many different forms that love, that one, lasting relationship can take. The characters leading these stories are all very different peop...more
Dec 27, 2011Will Ansbacher rated it liked it · review of another edition
Picked this up because I wanted to get beyond the tortured obsessions of Homecoming, and Schlink is so highly thought of, I wondered whether I was being overly critical. Happily this collection of short stories is much better, although not uniformly. The first, “Girl and Lizard” is written in the same dessicated and tortured style that beset Homecoming, only this time it’s over a painting. It’s also marred by Schlink’s tendency to sink into a courtroom inquisition substitute for conversation tha...more
Jun 25, 2019Richard Newton rated it liked it · review of another edition
A set of longish short stories, they are typically 50-60 pages so almost novellas. They build on common themes for Schlink - coming to terms with Germany's Nazi past, love, affairs and ageing. They are variable in quality, both in terms of the stories and the writing.
Schlink provides some interesting insights and observations, but the writing is not that great. There is too much telling the reader, and not enough space left to build up our own of images and letting us form our own observations.
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Jun 12, 2009Grady rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Promises met
Bernhard Schlink created a devoted following with the translation of his first novel THE READER. Opinion was divided among critics and readers as to whether or not this author was playing on simplistic heart-string tuggings or whether he really had somthing new to say and an equal talent to say it. Being part of the camp of readers who were caught up in the story of 'The Reader' and waited eagerly to see just where this writer would/could go, I am happy to say that FLIGHTS OF LOVE i
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Jan 24, 2013Sudara rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I borrowed this book from my friend's fiance. When my friend delivered it to me he said 'this looks like a very boring book'. Honestly I had my doubts when I started reading it as the story would go on with details but then the ending was not so dramatic or stunning as you usually get in fiction. But I liked Bernhard's style of writing. It's so beautiful that it always persuaded me to read more our of curiosity even if I knew the ending would not be surprising. My friend's fiance said his ending...more
Sep 04, 2009Kristine rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: short-stories
Schlink has written seven stories with male German protagonists. To me what unites the stories is a certain moodiness as the men examine the nature of love in their lives. Most deal with regret and loss. Some are compassionate and some shocking. It's difficult for me to rate the book as a single work. Of course I feel more strongly about some stories than others. I decided to go the generous route. I wasn't particularly impressed with the first three stories, though they are interesting, but I v...more
Jun 19, 2015Carole Rae rated it liked it · review of another edition
Girl with Lizard
This was a meh for me.
I really didn’t get the boy’s obsession with the painting. Why? Why choose a painting over real love? It seemed silly….it was probably symbolism for picking other things over love, but still a meh. 1 star for this.
A Little Fling
I’ll be honest….I was worried at first for this being a love story between the main guy and his friends’ daughter. Ugh, but it got worse and he had a fling with his friend’s wife. Geez. Why do people do this? I wanted to slap all thr
...more
May 02, 2009Bethany rated it liked it · review of another edition
My thoughts on 'Girl with a Lizard':
One's life, emotion, and feeling may be explained; the painting may take-on more meaning then anything else. She may offer an explanation for an unhappy or cheerful life that cannot be given by simple words and actions.
My thoughts after reading 'The Other Man':
Most don't understand the burden and cold gift that vengeance can be. The weak and trying obsession with the other person. How often you wish to be close to the other person--to find their secrets so you
...more
Jan 13, 2009bookczuk rated it liked it · review of another edition
There are times when I find the deliberateness of Bernhard Schlink perfect for the pace of my mind, and other times we are just out of sync. He continues in his thoughtful,steady manner, but I crave the quirky humor of Douglas Adams or Chris Moore, or even (shudder) something cotton candy light, to fluff out the creases in my brain. I think that may be why it took me so long to work through these stories-- my intellect wouldn't cooperate. I was never emotionally swept away by anything in the boo...more
Jul 27, 2011Melinda added it · review of another edition
I really liked Schlink's dry writing style in The Reader, where you had a whole book to learn about the characters and like them. It does NOT work so well in short stories. I was bored almost from page 1 and had to drag myself through this whole book. Even though almost every story was 50 pages long, I never understood the characters or their motivations to like them, let alone understand them. It shouldn't've taken me almost 3 weeks to read a 200 page book when if I really like a story I can re...more
Jun 07, 2012Redfox5 rated it did not like it · review of another edition
An unremarkable book of short stories, full of unremarkable and in most cases, unlikable characters. I wasn't excited about reading this to start with. I didn't think 'The Reader' was as good as everyone made it out to be. But I like to give authors a second chance. This was worst. I'm not the biggest fan of stort stories but these were just all so dull. I especially disliked 'A Little Fling' and the only story I found somewhat intresting was 'Sugar Peas' Maybe it's becuase I'm not smart enough...more
Jun 01, 2015Heidi Liu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Schlink, in his unassuming, matter-of-fact way, weaves a collection of stories that involve such a non-obvious tenderness as to first surprise and then endear his reader. This collection touches often upon the (potentially) uncomfortable realm of German-Jewish love affairs with grace and realism. Beneath his straightforward and engaging plot lines, Schlink also does a remarkable job of characterizing some of my favorite European cities. These are dignified, powerful stories, quietly told.
Dec 18, 2012Abdullah rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Bernard Schlink is a remarkably fine story teller. In his book, the Flights of Love, of seven short stories, while a bit uneven, he shows that he can relate tales of interest, of introspection, of intrigue, of self-deception, and generally can keep you flowing with his thoughts to the somewhat open-ended conclusions. Have you ever wondered what brought two lovers together despite their opposing cultural/religious differences? Read Schlink’s the Circumcision!
Mar 22, 2015Skeletonized rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
People who are in love should not read love stories.
Feb 09, 2018Sarwat rated it liked it · review of another edition
I was at first attracted by Schlink's calm, clear prose. There were no frills, no long and meandering descriptions. This clipped and clear method of prose was very refreshing.
One of the main irks of this book was the tendency to follow a sort of Hemingway-esque method of trying to convey layers of meaning beneath seemingly simple sentences and passages. It's not the easiest method of writing and very few writers can pull it off. I also thought that Schlink's world was something that I couldn't
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Feb 04, 2019Mélie rated it it was ok · review of another edition
I had really loved The Reader. So when I saw this one at the bookshop, I picked it up without thinking.
The pitch is interesting: how can a young American Jewish woman and a young German man live out their love story 50 years after the Holocaust?
But it seems like Schlink is more interested in staging debates than actually creating characters. Of course, what they say is interesting, but in that case, a smart essay would have been more appropriate. I was hoping for fiction. This is not good fictio
...more
Nov 30, 2018Lola rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
My favorite Schlink book.
I don't think it's easy to capture the different varieties of love. Or the emotions and thoughts in us that can make it and can break it.
It's not easy to write about love in a way that feels brutally real. But Schlink saw it and wrote it down. For us to read and identify within ourselves.
Intimate emotions are born out of who we are, our circumstances, and life situations. And Schlink shows that, in each one of his short stories.
Nov 02, 2018Andrew rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Seven stories...slices of life...by turns gripping & amusingly cynical about modern relationships with heavy feet dragging in past conflicts...written with a rhythm that equates to an earlier era of literature in German...funereal almost...bearing heavy burdens from 20th. century conflicts. Sad but worth the agony.
Nov 02, 2017Susan rated it liked it · review of another edition
Not my favorite of Schlink's work - long short stories, very bleak. Some (Girl with Lizard) more successful than others.
Jul 05, 2019Isabelle Faubert rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
As sinuous as real life can be. It hit the spot. Great read.
Jun 14, 2017Sophie Cayeux rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This is a gem to read especially when traveling. This collection of short stories got under my skin. Some stories explore cultural identity in love relationships. Some involve male characters who do not know how to love or are incapable of loving or only love themselves. The stories reminded me of how hard it is to have insight in how others love us. One cannot control love. Love cannot be tamed or harnessed. It has its own free will. One day it can just go and desert us. My only complaint is th...more
Mar 03, 2013Alden rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 2013-reads, foreign, from-booksale, short-stories, contemporary
I just finished reading Flights of Love by German lawyer and writer Bernhard Schlink, famed for his novel The Reader, and I must say that it was a simple collection of short stories but nobody can deny the fact that each story brings out strong message. All stories were long to cover the deeper meaning of love but short enough to keep it interesting as the author gave additional historical perspective of not only the Holocaust but also the typical lives of the people living in the Eastern and We...more
Feb 26, 2011Alison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Jul 20, 2015Jo Cunningham rated it really liked it · review of another edition
7 short stories, each with characters different in age and temperament, with unique perspectives and goals, problems and resolutions. The last story, 'The Woman at the Gas Station' was particularly poignant to me, and left me thinking about marriages...my own in particular. The rhythms of a man and woman together over decades, the early passions and intense lovemaking and exploration of each other's inner worlds; the busy-ness of life...buying a house together, engaging in careers, interacting w...more
Nov 15, 2014M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: translations-europe, translated-from-german, fiction-publ-2000-onward
Contents:
Girl with Lizard; A Little Fling; The Other Man; Sugar Peas; The Circumcision; The Son; The Woman at the Gas Station.
All seven of these stories are about German men. The first is about a young man discovering his parent's past through searching the history of a painting that hung in his father's study.
Relationships between a West Berlin man and an East Berlin couple before and after the fall of the Wall are examined in A Little Fling, a story of betrayal.
The Other Man and Sugar Peas bot
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Nov 11, 2010Alice Radwell rated it really liked it · review of another edition
In ‘The Reader’ Bernard Schlink utilized an affair between a teenage boy and an SS solder to explore the relationship between Germany’s past and present. Through his unsympathetic, blunt and distinctive prose he investigates the wider effects of concentration camps beyond terrified Jews huddled in gas chambers. The result is astounding; an erotic, tragic, and beautiful narrative demonstrating how morals blur, and love changes.
In ‘Flights of Love’ Schlink is just as unforgiving in his style and s
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Feb 25, 2016Lawrence rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I always think I do not like short stories. But these stories are fantastic. Mr. Schlink gives us the unexpected resolution in a situation that seems to call for revenge and in which a peevish revenge is planned ('The Other Man'); the self-fertilized growth of life complications, the complexities of escape, and the creation of a community of 'trigamy' ('Sugar Peas'); the modern-day German and modern-day Jew in love and facing the hard questions ('The Circumcision'); the unexpected sadness of a d...more
Apr 20, 2012Lottie rated it liked it · review of another edition
At first, I didn't realise that this was a book of short stories. However, I think Schlink is best suited to novels like The Reader. His short stories in this were built up beautifully, however they were rushed at the end, like he had run out of ideas to sustain the idea. Each one of these, with the exception of 'The Other Man' could have been crafted into novellas or longer short stories. I also feel like he is exhausting the Holocaust and German politics in the 1960's/70's by writing about the...more
Aug 03, 2015Emma rated it it was ok · review of another edition
How can something so ponderous prove to be this lightweight and insubstantial? The characters are at best ideas and abstractions, at worst exhausted cliches. And throughout it all, Schlink's obsession with being German in the latter half of the 20th century.
One man mired in regret or making regrettable decisions can work as a book, but not a collection of men doing just that one after the other.
It's dismal and flimsy enough that I feel like I must have been taken in by The Reader. Maybe I invest
...more
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Bernhard Schlink is a German jurist and writer. He became a judge at the Constitutional Court of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1988 and has been a professor of public law and the philosophy of law at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany since January 2006.
His career as a writer began with several detective novels with a main character named Selb--a play on the German word for 'sel
...more
“The past has to be remembered, so that it's never repeated.” — 7 likes
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The Reader
AuthorBernhard Schlink
Original titleDer Vorleser
TranslatorCarol Brown Janeway
Cover artistKathleen DiGrado (design), Sean Kernan (photo)
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman
GenreNovel
PublisherVintage International
1995
Pages218 pp
ISBN0-375-70797-2
OCLC370051270

The Reader (German: Der Vorleser) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen, those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the struggle to come to terms with the past, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades.[1]

Schlink's book was well received in his native country and elsewhere, winning several awards. Der Spiegel wrote that it was one of the greatest triumphs of German literature since Günter Grass's The Tin Drum. It sold 500,000 copies in Germany and was listed 14th of the 100 favorite books of German readers in a television poll in 2007.[2] It won the German Hans Fallada Prize in 1998, and became the first German book to top The New York Times bestselling books list. It has been translated into 45 different languages and has been included in the curricula of college-level courses in Holocaust literature and German language and German literature. It was adapted by David Hare into the 2008 film of the same name directed by Stephen Daldry; the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, with Kate Winslet winning for her portrayal of Hanna Schmitz.

  • 1Synopsis
  • 2Literary elements
  • 3Reception

Synopsis[edit]

Characters[edit]

  • Michael Berg, a German man who is first portrayed as a 15-year-old boy and is revisited at later parts of his life; notably, when he is a researcher in legal history, divorced with one daughter, Julia. Like many of his generation, he struggles to come to terms with his country's recent history.
  • Hanna Schmitz, a former guard at Auschwitz. She is 36, illiterate and working as a tram conductor in Neustadt when she first meets 15-year-old Michael. She takes a dominant position in their relationship.
  • Sophie, a friend of Michael's when he is in school, and on whom he probably has a crush. She is almost the first person whom he tells about Hanna. When he begins his friendship with her, he begins to 'betray' Hanna by denying her relationship with him and by cutting short his time with Hanna to be with Sophie and his other friends.
  • Michael's father, a philosophy professor who specializes in Kant and Hegel. During the Nazi era he lost his job for giving a lecture on Spinoza and had to support himself and his family by writing hiking guidebooks. He is very formal and requires his children to make appointments to see him. He is emotionally stiff and does not easily express his emotions to Michael or his three siblings, which exacerbates the difficulties Hanna creates for Michael. By the time Michael is narrating the story, his father is dead.
  • Michael's mother, seen briefly. Michael has fond memories of her pampering him as a child, which his relationship with Hanna reawakens. A psychoanalyst tells him he should consider his mother's effect on him more, since she barely figures in his retelling of his life.
  • The daughter of a Jewish woman who wrote the book about the death march from Auschwitz. She lives in New York City when Michael visits her near the end of the story, still suffering from the loss of her own family.

Part 1[edit]

The story is told in three parts by the main character, Michael Berg. Each part takes place in a different time period in the past. Part I begins in a West German city in 1958. After 15-year-old Michael becomes ill on his way home, 36-year-old tram conductor Hanna Schmitz notices him, cleans him up, and sees him safely home. He spends the next three months absent from school battling hepatitis. He visits Hanna to thank her for her help and realizes he is attracted to her. Embarrassed after she catches him watching her getting dressed, he runs away, but he returns days later. After she asks him to retrieve coal from her cellar, he is covered in coal dust; she watches him bathe and seduces him. He returns eagerly to her apartment on a regular basis, and they begin a heated affair. They develop a ritual of bathing and having sex, before which she frequently has him read aloud to her, especially classical literature, such as The Odyssey and Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog. Both remain somewhat distant from each other emotionally, despite their physical closeness. Hanna is at times physically and verbally abusive to Michael. Months into the relationship, she suddenly leaves without a trace. The distance between them had been growing as Michael had been spending more time with his school friends; he feels guilty and believes it was something he did that caused her departure. The memory of her taints all his other relationships with women.

Part 2[edit]

Six years later, while attending law school, Michael is part of a group of students observing a war crimes trial. A group of middle-aged women who had served as SS guards at a satellite of Auschwitz in occupied Poland are being tried for allowing 300 Jewish women under their ostensible 'protection' to die in a fire locked in a church that had been bombed during the evacuation of the camp. The incident was chronicled in a book written by one of the few survivors, who emigrated to the United States after the war; she is the main prosecution witness at the trial.

Michael is stunned to see that Hanna is one of the defendants, sending him on a roller coaster of complex emotions. He feels guilty for having loved a remorseless criminal and at the same time is mystified at Hanna's willingness to accept full responsibility for supervising the other guards despite evidence proving otherwise. She is accused of writing the account of the fire.

At first she denies this, then in panic admits it in order not to have to provide a sample of her handwriting. Michael, horrified, realizes then that Hanna has a secret that she refuses to reveal at any cost—that she is illiterate. This explains many of Hanna's actions: her refusal of the promotion that would have removed her from the responsibility of supervising these women and also the panic she carried her entire life over being discovered.

During the trial, it transpires that she took in the weak, sickly women and had them read to her before they were sent to the gas chambers. Michael is uncertain if she wanted to make their last days bearable or if she sent them to their death so they would not reveal her secret.

She is convicted and sentenced to life in prison while the other women receive only minor sentences. After much deliberation, he chooses not to reveal her secret, which could have saved her from her life sentence, as their relationship was a forbidden one because he was a minor at the time.

Part 3[edit]

Years have passed, Michael is divorced and has a daughter from his failed marriage. He is trying to come to terms with his feelings for Hanna and begins taping readings of books and sending them to her without any correspondence while she is in prison. Hanna begins to teach herself to read, and then write in a childlike way, by borrowing the books from the prison library and following the tapes along in the text. She writes to Michael, but he cannot bring himself to reply. After 18 years, Hanna is about to be released, so he agrees (after hesitation) to find her a place to stay and employment, visiting her in prison. On the day of her release in 1983, she commits suicide and Michael is heartbroken. Michael learns from the warden that she had been reading books by many prominent Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, and histories of the camps. The warden, in her anger towards Michael for communicating with Hanna only by audio tapes, expresses Hanna's disappointment. Hanna left him an assignment: give all her money to the survivor of the church fire.

While in the U.S., Michael travels to New York to visit the Jewish woman who was a witness at the trial, and who wrote the book about the winter death march from Auschwitz. She can see his terrible conflict of emotions and he finally tells of his youthful relationship with Hanna. The unspoken damage she left to the people around her hangs in the air. He reveals his short, cold marriage, and his distant relationship with his daughter. The woman understands, but nonetheless refuses to take the savings Hanna had asked Michael to convey to her, saying, 'Using it for something to do with the Holocaust would really seem like an absolution to me, and that is something I neither wish nor care to grant.' She asks that he donate it as he sees fit; he chooses a Jewish charity for combating illiteracy, in Hanna's name. Having had a caddy stolen from her when she was a child in the camp, the woman does take the old tea caddy in which Hanna had kept her money and mementos. Returning to Germany, and with a letter of thanks for the donation made in Hanna's name, Michael visits Hanna's grave after ten years for the first and only time.

Literary elements[edit]

Der vorleser bernhard schlink

Style[edit]

Schlink's tone is sparse; he writes with an 'icy clarity that simultaneously reveals and conceals,' as Ruth Franklin puts it,[3] a style exemplified by the bluntness of chapter openings at key turns in the plot, such as the first sentence of chapter seven: 'The next night I fell in love with her.'[4] His 'clear and unadorned language enhances the authenticity of the text,' according to S. Lillian Kremer, and the short chapters and streamlined plot recall detective novels and increase the realism.[5] Schlink's main theme is how his generation, and indeed all generations after the Third Reich, have struggled to come to terms with the crimes of the Nazis: 'the past which brands us and with which we must live.'[6] For his cohorts, there was the unique position of being blameless and the sense of duty to call to account their parents' generation:

… [which] had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from their midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame … We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst … The more horrible the events about which we read and heard, the more certain we became of our responsibility to enlighten and accuse.[7]

But while he would like it to be as simple as that, his experience with Hanna complicates matters:

I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna's crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding. But even as I wanted to understand Hanna, failing to understand her meant betraying her all over again. I could not resolve this. I wanted to pose myself both tasks—understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.[8]

Hanna and Michael's asymmetrical relationship enacts, in microcosm, the pas de deux of older and younger Germans in the postwar years: Michael concludes that 'the pain I went through because of my love for Hanna was, in a way, the fate of my generation, a German fate.'[9] This idea plays itself out in the scene where the student Michael hitchhikes to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp site during the trial, to get what he hopes will be some sense of the place. The driver who picks him up is an older man who questions him closely about what he believes motivated those who carried out the killings, then offers an answer of his own:

An executioner is not under orders. He's doing his work, he doesn't hate the people he executes, he's not taking revenge on them, he's not killing them because they're in his way or threatening or attacking them. They're a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.[10]

After the man tells an anecdote about a photograph of Jews being shot in Russia, one that he supposedly saw, but which showed an unusual level of insight into what a Nazi officer might have been thinking, Michael suspects him of being that officer and confronts him. The man stops the car and asks him to leave.[11]

Metaphor[edit]

Germany had the highest literacy rate in Europe; Franklin suggests that Hanna's illiteracy represented the ignorance that allowed ordinary people to commit atrocities.[3] Nicholas Wroe, in the Guardian, likewise writes of the relationship between Hanna's illiteracy and the Third Reich's 'moral illiteracy,'[12] and Ron Rosenbaum of Slate says that Hanna is 'a stand-in for the German people and their supposed inability to 'read' the signs that mass murder was being done in their name, by their fellow citizens.'[13] Michael's relationship with Hanna, partly erotic and partly maternal, stands for the ambivalent relationship of present-day Germany and its Nazi past: the past is 'mother' of Michael's generation, and he eventually finds out, like other Germans of his generation, that his 'parents' were guilty. 'The paralyzing shame, the psychic numbing, the moral failures of the 'lucky late-born' are the novel's central focus,' writes Suzanne Ruta in the New York Times.[14] Only through his relationship with Hanna can Michael get well; Franklin interprets that to mean that 'postwar Germany is sick, and it can begin to heal only through its encounter with the Nazi past.'[3] Richard Bernstein of the New York Times also notes that 'In some sense, perhaps, Hanna can be seen to stand in for the larger German quandary of remembrance and atonement,' but prefers not to read the novel as an allegory.[15] That said, the novel is about Michael, not Hanna; the original German title, Der Vorleser, specifically indicates one who reads aloud, as Michael does for Hanna.[16]

The Reader abounds with references to representations of the Holocaust, both external and internal to Michael's narrative, some real and some invented by Schlink. Of the latter, the most important is the book by the death-march survivor that constitutes the basis of the case against Hanna. It is summarized at some length and even briefly quoted, although its title is never given. Michael must read it in English since its German translation has not yet been published: '(It was) an unfamiliar and laborious exercise at the time. And as always, the alien language, unmastered and struggled over, created a strange concatenation of distance and immediacy.' On a second reading in later life, he says, 'it is the book that creates distance.'[17] For Michael, written media alone cannot convey a full impression of the Holocaust: the victims are not sympathetic, and the oppressors are too faceless to be judged. He cannot muster up the empathy to 'make the experience part of his internal life,' according to Froma Zeitlin.[16] Hanna, however, has the opposite experience upon reading books by Holocaust survivors. She tells Michael:

I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, no one can call you to account. Not even the court could call me to account. But the dead can. They understand. They don't even have to have been there, but if they do, they understand even better. Here in prison they were with me a lot. They came every night, whether I wanted them to or not. Before the trial I could still chase them away when they wanted to come.[18]

When she breaks with German practice and asks the judge at her trial 'What would you have done?'[19] about whether she should have left her job at Siemens and taken the guard position, her question indicates that she does not know that she could have acted differently,[5] and her statement that there was 'no alternative' claims a lack of moral responsibility.[20] As a result of her shame at being illiterate, she has not only let the bulk of the crime be pinned on her, she has let those with a greater share of responsibility escape full accountability. Franklin writes that this is the moral center of the novel—that Hanna, as Michael puts it, chooses exposure as a criminal over exposure as an illiterate—and in Franklin's view the novel cannot recover from the weakness of this position. Franklin regards it not only as implausible, but the implication that Hanna chose the job and acted as she did because of her illiteracy appears intended to exonerate her. Her Nazism was accidental, and Franklin writes that Schlink offers no guidance about how to punish a brutality of convenience, rather than of ideology.[21]

Michael is aware that all his attempts to visualize what Hanna might have been like back then, what happened, are colored by what he has read and seen in movies. He feels a difficult identification with the victims when he learns that Hanna often picked one prisoner to read to her, as she chose him later on, only to send that girl to Auschwitz and the gas chamber after several months. Did she do it to make the last months of the condemned more bearable? Or to keep her secret safe? Michael's inability to both condemn and understand springs from this. He asks himself and the reader:

What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to make the horrors an object of inquiry is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?[22]

Intertextuality[edit]

The books read in the novel, both by Michael to Hanna and by Hanna herself, are significant. Michael selects texts from the Enlightenment, 'with its emphasis on moral and ethical absolutes,' and German classics by which means he tries to reclaim German heritage.[5] The texts include Friedrich Schiller's Intrigue and Love and Gotthold Lessing's Emilia Galotti.

Katharina Hall writes that the novel itself relies on intertextual knowledge: it 'reworks the ‘Väterliteratur’ model of the 1970s and 1980s,' which depicts the relationship between the first and second generations; here, however, the relationship is sexual rather than parent-child. She also notes the invoking of tropes present in mass-market romance fiction, though the gender roles are inverted.[23]

Reception[edit]

The Reader sold 500,000 copies in Germany. It received several literary awards and many favorable reviews. In 2004, when the television networkZDF published a list of the 100 favorite books of German readers, it was 14th, the second-highest ranking for any contemporary German novel on the list.[24] Critic Rainer Moritz of Die Welt wrote that it took 'the artistic contrast between private and public to the absurd.'[25] Werner Fuld wrote in Focus that 'one must not let great themes roll away, when one can truly write about them.'[26] In 1998 The Reader was awarded the Hans Fallada Prize, a German literary award.

As of 2002 the novel had been translated into 25 languages.[12] Writing in The New York Times, Richard Bernstein called it 'arresting, philosophically elegant, (and) morally complex.'[15] While finding the ending too abrupt Suzanne Ruta said in the New York Times Book Review that 'daring fusion of 19th-century post-romantic, post-fairy-tale models with the awful history of the 20th century makes for a moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful work.'[14] It went on to sell two million copies in the United States (many of them after it was featured in Oprah's Book Club in 1999) 200,000 copies in the UK, 100,000 in France,[12] and in South Africa it was awarded the 1999 Boeke Prize.

Criticism[edit]

Schlink's problematic approach toward Hanna's culpability in the Final Solution has been a frequent complaint about the book. Early on he was accused of revising or falsifying history. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jeremy Adler accused him of 'cultural pornography' and said the novel simplifies history and compels its readers to identify with the perpetrators.[27] In the English-speaking world, Frederic Raphael wrote that no one could recommend the book 'without having a tin ear for fiction and a blind eye for evil.'[28]Ron Rosenbaum, criticizing the film adaptation of The Reader, wrote that even if Germans like Hanna were metaphorically 'illiterate', 'they could have heard it from Hitler's mouth in his infamous 1939 radio broadcast to Germany and the world, threatening extermination of the Jews if war started. You had to be deaf, dumb, and blind, not merely illiterate… You'd have to be exceedingly stupid.'[13] (This refers to the January 30, 1939 statement to the Reichstag,[29] later deliberately misdated to 1 September 1939[30])

Cynthia Ozick in Commentary Magazine called it a 'product, conscious or not, of a desire to divert (attention) from the culpability of a normally educated population in a nation famed for Kultur.'[31] Ozick's reading of the novel was challenged by Richard H. Weisberg, who highlighted a passage in the novel where Hanna strikes Michael repeatedly with a leather strap drawing blood and splitting his lip. In Weisberg's view, Schlink has Hanna revert to concentration-camp mode, the split lip reminding us of the bloodletting of millions.[32] Jeffrey I. Roth replied that Ozick had misread the novel, confusing the perspective of the immature and impressionable narrator, Michael Berg, who loves Hanna and cannot condemn her entirely, with the point of view of the author, Bernhard Schlink, who writes of Hanna, 'That woman was truly brutal.' Roth found in Hanna an unsympathetic character who behaves brutally and never fully accepts her criminal responsibility, making Ozick's suggestion, that Schlink wants us to sympathize with Hanna and by extension her Nazi cohorts, implausible.[33]

As critics of The Reader argued increasingly on historical grounds, pointing out that everybody in Germany could and should have known about Hitler's intentions towards the Jews, there has not been a great deal of discussion about the character 'Hanna' having been born not in Germany proper, but in the City of Hermannstadt (modern-day Sibiu), a long-standing centre of German culture in Transylvania, Romania. The first study on the reasons Germans from Transylvania entered the SS appeared only in 2007, twelve years after the novel was published; in general, discussions on The Reader have solidly placed Hanna in the context of Germany. The study paints a historical picture as complex as Schlink's novel.[34]

Schlink wrote that 'in Israel and New York the older generation liked the book,' but those of his own generation were more likely to criticize Michael (and his) inability to fully condemn Hanna. He added, 'I've heard that criticism several times but never from the older generation, people who have lived through it.'[12]

Film adaptation[edit]

The film version, adapted by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry, was released in December 2008. Kate Winslet played Hanna,[35] with David Kross as the young Michael and Ralph Fiennes as the older man.[36]Bruno Ganz and Lena Olin played supporting roles. It was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture. Winslet won the Oscar for leading actress.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^Franklin, Ruth. A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 201ff.
  2. ^'Unsere Besten', ZDF, October 31, 2007, accessed January 21, 2011.
  3. ^ abcFranklin 2010, pp. 201–202.
  4. ^The Reader, p. 27.
  5. ^ abcKremer, S. Lillian (2003). Holocaust Literature: Lerner to Zychlinsky, index. Taylor & Francis.
  6. ^The Reader, p. 181.
  7. ^The Reader, pp. 92–93.
  8. ^The Reader, p. 157.
  9. ^The Reader, p. 171.
  10. ^The Reader, p. 151.
  11. ^The Reader, p. 152.
  12. ^ abcdWroe, Nicholas. 'Reader's guide to a moral maze', The Guardian, February 9, 2002.
    • Wroe writes that the book had sold 75,000 copies in the U.S. by 2002. Ruth Franklin (2010) writes that the figure is two million; see p. 201.
  13. ^ abRosenbaum, Ron. 'Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader', Slate, February 9, 2009.
  14. ^ abRuta, Suzanne. 'Secrets and Lies', The New York Times, July 27, 1997.
  15. ^ abBernstein, Richard. 'Once Loving, Once Cruel, What's Her Secret?', The New York Times, August 20, 1997.
  16. ^ abZeitlin, Froma. 'New Soundings in Holocaust Literature'. In Postone, Moishe; Santner, Eric L. (eds.). Catastrophe and meaning: the Holocaust and the twentieth century.
  17. ^The Reader, p. 118.
  18. ^The Reader, pp. 198–199.
  19. ^The Reader, pp. 128.
  20. ^Tabensky, Pedro Alexis (2006). Judging and understanding: essays on free will, narrative, meaning and the ethical limits of condemnation. Ashgate Publishing. p. 70.
  21. ^Franklin 2010, p. 204.
  22. ^The Reader, p. 104.
  23. ^Hall, Katharina (July 2006). 'The Author, The Novel, The Reader and The Perils of 'Neue Lesbarkeit': A Comparative Analysis of Bernhard Schlink's Selbs Justiz and Der Vorleser'. German Life and Letters. 59 (3). doi:10.1111/j.0016-8777.2006.00360.x.
  24. ^ZDF.de - Top 50
  25. ^Rainer Moritz. Die Welt. October 15, 1999
  26. ^Fuld, Werner. Focus. September 30, 1995.
  27. ^Oltermann, Philip. 'Re-readings', Prospect, February 29, 2008.
  28. ^Raphael, Frederick. 'Bad Beyond Imagination', Standpoint, March 2009.
  29. ^Ben Kiernan Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination Page 440 2007 'Hitler announced his priorities on January 30, 1939: 'Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe'
  30. ^Peter Hayes, Donald G. Schilling, Jeffry M. Diefendorf (1998). Lessons and Legacies: Teaching the Holocaust in a changing world, p. 27: 'It is worth noting that this misdating, designed to associate the killing of Jews with the war, was not only broadcast on German radio and printed with the wrong date in German newspapers of the time; it was also repeated in print in'
  31. ^Ozick, Cynthia. 'The Rights of History and the Rights of Imagination', Commentary, March 1999.
  32. ^Weisberg, Richard H. 'A Sympathy That Does Not Condone', Law and Literature, summer 2004, vol. 16, No. 2.
    • For the passage about the leather strap, see The Reader, pp. 54–55.
  33. ^Roth, Jeffrey I. 'Reading and Misreading The Reader', Law and Literature, summer 2004, vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 163–177.
    • For the quote about Hanna, see The Reader, p. 213.
  34. ^Milata, Paul. Zwischen Hitler, Stalin und Antonescu: Rumäniendeutsche in der Waffen-SS. Böhlau. Cologne 2007.
  35. ^Jeff Labrecque, 'Best Actress,' Entertainment Weekly 1032/1033 (Jan. 30/Feb. 6, 2009): 45.
  36. ^

Further reading[edit]

  • BBC World Book Club. Podcast of Bernhard Schlink talking about The Reader, January 1, 2011, accessed January 20, 2011.
  • Oprah's Book Club. 'The Reader', December 5, 2008, accessed January 20, 2011.
  • UC Santa Barbara. 'Reading guide for Schlink: The Reader', accessed January 20, 2011.
  • Project work by a German class 'The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - Summary, characterizations and interpretations', accessed March 31, 2015.
  • Vintage Books and Anchor Books. 'The Reader Reading Group Guide', accessed January 20, 2011.
  • Complete book review, analysis and interpretation 'The Reader - Bernhard Schlink - Projectwork', accessed December 18, 2012.
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