The Reader

Bernhard Schlink’s spare, haunting novel opens in postwar Germany, where fifteen-year-old Michael begins a secret affair with Hanna, a woman more than twice his age who abruptly disappears. Years later, as a law student, Michael sees her again in a courtroom, on trial for crimes committed as a concentration-camp guard. The book wrestles with guilt, literacy, and how a later generation reckons with the Holocaust.