For further information check Oprah and Duisburger Informationsnetz für Germanistik und Schulpraxis.

Schul-Projekte

Ein Inter-Projekt eines deutschen Leistungskurses

Interaktiver Text im Web (Middlebury College)

Schulprojekt

Already an acclaimed and best-selling work of fiction in Europe (currently being translated into fourteen different languages worldwide), The Reader is both a literary surprise and a moral challenge: a riveting, provocative, and deeply moving novel about a young boy's erotic awakening in a passionate, clandestine love affair with an older woman, and what happens to them both when the secrets in her past are revealed.

Fifteen-year-old Michael Berg becomes ill on the way home from school. A woman takes care of him. Later, the boy arrives at her home with a bunch of flowers to thank her. And then comes back again. Hanna is the first woman he has ever desired. But there is something slightly off-key about her. His questions about her family and her life go unanswered. One day Hanna simply disappears. Michael's life goes on, but he can't forget her.

Years later, as law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved so passionately is a criminal. Much about her behavior during the trial makes no sense. But then, suddenly and terribly, it does--Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret.

As the past erupts into the present--both Michael's past with Hanna, and the past of Germany itself--Michael must accept that he will never be free of either of them.

"The best novel I read this year .... An unforgettable short tale about love, horror and mercy in Germany before and after 1945. Word of mouth about this novel ran all over Europe before the publicity machine caught up."
--Neil Ascherson, Independent on Sunday Books of the Year

"The most sensational book of the season...great literature."
--Daniel Cohn-Bendit

"A breathtaking novel of terrible love. A novel that sucks you in with its power, so that once you start to read, you cannot put it down. Truly exciting."
--Focus Munich

"A high point of the literary season. An electrifying story, told with both passion and restraint."
-- Tagesspiegel Berlin

"Superb..."
-- Le Monde

"The Reader is one of the most successful, one of the richest, one of the most overwhelming novels I have read for a very long time. By virtue of both its moral force and artistic quality, this novel brings something entirely new and profoundly original to the never-ending labor of grief for Germany's past."
-- Jorge Semprun, Le Journal du Dimanche

-- Inter Nationes.

-- Verschiedene Informationen und Links

-- amazon.com reviews and the German site.

-- Barnes and Noble reviews

-- D. J. Enright's review in The New York Review of Books

-- Dinita Smith's review in The New York Times

-- Beatrice Interview.

-- Werkanalyse

-- Weltwoche

-- Spiegel

-- Tagesspiegel

-- Tagesspiegel 18.12.

-- Laudatio auf Schlink

-- Jewish Bulletin

-- Books in translation

-- Reading Group Center.

-- Oprah questions

-- Bob Corbett