The Reader

The phenomenal success of the novel by contemporary German writer Bernhard Schlink "The Reader" (1995) can only be compared to the popularity of Patrick Süskind's novel "Perfume," which was released twenty years earlier. "The Reader" has been translated into thirty-nine languages, the book has become a worldwide bestseller and has collected a whole bouquet of prestigious literary awards in Europe and America. The suddenly ignited romance between a fifteen-year-old teenager, a boy from a professor's family, and an older woman abruptly ended when she disappeared from the city without warning. Eight years later, he, now a graduating law student, sees her again—among the former guards of a women's concentration camp at the trial against Nazi criminals. But this is not the only secret that has been revealed to the protagonist of Bernhard Schlink's novel "The Reader"…