The Reader

The author of this book is Bernhard Schlink, and the original was written in German. I read it in English.

One day in post‑war Germany, Michael, a fifteen‑year‑old boy, suddenly becomes ill on his way home. A beautiful woman named Hanna, thirty‑five and living alone, helps him. After he recovers from hepatitis, he visits her apartment to thank her. From there, they become lovers. Reading aloud to Hanna soon becomes a strange but intimate part of their relationship.

Then, without warning, she disappears.

A few years later, Michael sees her again by chance. Now a law student, he attends a trial of former Nazis charged with war crimes—and Hanna is one of the defendants. She had served in the Waffen‑SS as a guard at a concentration camp.

During the trial, she is treated as the person chiefly responsible for a horrific incident, and she reluctantly accepts this role. She does so because she wants to hide her secret. To protect it, she receives a life sentence.

For Hanna, preserving her dignity and concealing her private shame means everything. Michael realizes the truth during the trial and even visits the presiding judge, but in the end he cannot bring himself to reveal her secret.

Instead, he sends her recordings of himself reading books—tapes with no messages attached—throughout her years in prison.

The central themes of the novel are Germany’s guilt over the Holocaust and the tension between personal humiliation and human dignity. The eroticism in the first part of the book serves as a metaphor for the guilt carried by the post‑war second generation. Michael is never truly free from his relationship with Hanna.

Literacy allows us to conceptualize our experiences and grasp their essence. In prison, Hanna learns to read—and through reading, she also learns about the Holocaust. I cried at the end.

Our generation in Japan is similar to Michael’s. We condemned our fathers and clashed with them when we were young. Yet unlike the Germans, the Japanese have never fully confronted our own war crimes.

 

Comments

  1. BroccoliMay 24, 2013, 11:53:00 PM

    So you finished it!
    My generation has only heard about the war from our grandparents -- I assume that's quite different from your generation...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. F HiroshiMay 25, 2013, 9:44:00 AM

      I read this book and I started writing this review. But I realized the lack of my understanding. So I read one more time with a dictionary.

      I was part of the 'Zenkyoutou (全共闘) generation' in the late 1960s.
      But I guess Michael's generation in Germany has more intensity of the sense of guilt than Japanese.

      Anyway, this novel is good.
      Thank you.

      Delete

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