The Reader: A novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)

The Reader: A novel (Vintage International) By Bernhard Schlink Cover Image

The Reader: A novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)

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“This uncommonly affecting page-turner, set in postwar Germany, evokes equal depths of thought and feeling. Written in spare, keenly observed prose, it is a story of love, and of personal and historical responsibility, and the novel's wrenching moral questions still have me in their grip.”
— John Willson, Eagle Harbor Book Company, Bainbridge Island, WA

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER •  Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

"A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

BERNHARD SCHLINK was born in Germany in 1944. A professor of law at the University of Berlin and a practicing judge, he is also the author of several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.


Product Details ISBN: 9780375707971
ISBN-10: 0375707972
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: March 7th, 1999
Pages: 224
Language: English
Series: Vintage International

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"A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel." —Los Angeles Times

"Moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful.... [The Reader] leaps national boundaries and speaks straight to the heart."—The New York Times Book Review

"Arresting, philosophically elegant, morally complex.... Mr. Schlink tells his story with marvelous directness and simplicity."—The New York Times

"Haunting.... What Schlink does best, what makes this novel most memorable, are the small moments of highly charged eroticism." —Francine Prose, Elle