The Reader
Bernhard Schlink (1995)
“A fifteen-year-old boy's affair with an older woman becomes a reckoning with the Holocaust, illiteracy, and the moral inheritance Germany's second generation cannot escape.”
Short Summary
In 1958 postwar Germany, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg begins a passionate affair with Hanna Schmitz, a thirty-six-year-old streetcar conductor who asks him to read aloud to her before they make love. She vanishes without explanation. Years later, Michael — now a law student — watches Hanna stand trial as a former SS guard at Auschwitz. During the trial, he realizes her terrible secret: Hanna is illiterate. She allowed herself to be convicted of a crime she may not have solely committed rather than reveal her shame. Michael must decide whether to intervene. He doesn't. The novel follows Michael through decades of paralysis as he sends Hanna recordings of books he reads aloud, reconnecting through the medium that first bound them. She teaches herself to read in prison. Before her release, she hangs herself. Michael is left carrying the weight of silence, complicity, and love that was never adequate to the moral demands placed upon it.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens in 1958 in a West German city. Michael Berg, fifteen, falls ill with hepatitis on his way home from school and is helped by Hanna Schmitz, a thirty-six-year-old woman who lives alone and works as a streetcar conductor. After his recovery, Michael returns to thank her, and an intense ...