![]() The Reader tells the story of an affair between Michaël, a young German law student and Hanna, a former SS officer. Doing history means building bridges between the past and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides.In this clear and detailed reading guide, we’ve done all the hard work for you! It is also not true, as outsiders might assume, that one can merely observe the richness of life in the past, whereas one can participate in the present. And the past I arrived in as a legal historian was no less alive than the present. Now escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. But not too long the longer he took, the greater the tension and expectation, and the better his answer had to be. Behind it, he could take a little time to find an answer. It was clear to everyone, it was clear to him too, and I understood why he had adopted an expression of irritation as his defining feature. He had to answer he could not ignore the question or brush it away with a reprimand or a dismissive counterquestion. But now the question had been asked, and everyone was waiting for the judge’s answer. It is not the custom at German trials for defendants to question the judges. She did not know what she should or could have done differently, and therefore wanted to hear from the judge, who seemed to know everything, what he would have done.Įverything was quiet for a moment. ‘I…I mean…so what would you have done?’ Hanna meant it as a serious question. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you’re doing. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. I know that disavowal is an unusual form of betrayal. I kept something to myself that I should have revealed. I didn’t reveal anything that I should have kept to myself. Not that I gave away any secrets or exposed Hanna. I will leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book. But if you haven’t watched the movie, then I would recommend that you read the book first and then watch the movie. It is good in its own right, but all the surprises have been revealed if you have already watched the movie. If you have seen the movie version of ‘The Reader’, I don’t know whether I should recommend the book to you. I wish things had turned out differently. Hanna is a beautiful, haunting heroine and I will never forget her. But inspite of that, the ending was still heartbreaking. ![]() I thought that as I knew the story already, the book wouldn’t affect me that much. The book also mentions many German books and writers – Intrigues and Love by Schiller, Schnitzler, Heller, Fontane, Heine Morike, Kafka, Frisch, Johnson, Bachmann, Lenz – one can make a ‘TBR’ list out of it □ The things about Bernhard Schlink’s prose in ‘Homecoming’ that I liked very much were all there in ‘The Reader’ – the deceptively simple prose which hides the depth of the philosophical ideas and questions he addresses, the insightful observations on different things, the quotable quotes in every chapter. It also leaves many clues to the central mystery which I don’t remember the movie doing. The reasoning behind Hanna’s reluctance to reveal her secret is also better explained in the book. The book is good with respect to the philosophical discussions which are explored through the narrator’s voice, which is difficult to do in a movie. The movie was good in terms of creating a visual picture of the story and saying things which cannot be said in words. But if I stick my neck out and make the comparison, I would say that the movie and the book were good in different ways. ![]() With our memory being unreliable most times, I would take my own comparison with a pinch of salt. Which one is better – the movie or the book? I saw the movie a few years back when it came out and I can only talk about what I remember now about the impression the movie created on me at that time. That is one of the problems of seeing the movie version before reading the book. When I read the book and the parts about Hanna, Kate Winslet’s face kept coming to my mind. The movie stays more or less faithful to the book with some minor liberties to the screenplay. What I would like to say after reading the book is this. I am not going to bore you with the plot outline of the story, as you have probably seen the movie version of ‘The Reader’ (for which Kate Winslet won an Oscar). So when German Literature Month arrived this year I added ‘The Reader’ to my ‘Must read’ list. I have wanted to read other books by him since then, especially his more famous book ‘The Reader’. I read Bernhard Schlink’s ‘Homecoming’ last year and liked it very much.
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