Post World War II Germany was both a pivotal time and place; the country ravaged by war, its population decimated, its people torn and relationships severed. In Berlin, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is on his way home from school one day when he suddenly falls ill, collapsing on the side of the street and awakening later to find himself in the company of his rescuer, a beautiful woman named Hannah Schmitz. Despite the fact that she's a war widow twice his age, Hannah and Michael are soon entangled into a passionate love affair, the two forming an almost ethereal bond, sharing their lives, secrets, pasts and most intimate of intimacies. It lasts three months until the day Hannah inexplicably disappears, vanishing without a trace.It is ten years before they meet again. When Michael does once again finally see his beloved--who he’s only been obsessing about every day for the last decade--he is a law student at the university and Hannah is in court, standing trial for an unspeakable crime Michael was never aware of. Only now, as the trial progresses, does Michael realize the terrible secret Hannah has been guarding all these years, a secret she has up to now considered too shameful to tell anyone, even Michael. Schlink, a former judge turned full-time author who lives in Berlin, has crafted a breathtaking tale of love, passion and coming of age. An Oprah Book Club book and bestseller following its release in Germany in 1995, The Reader is a compelling read, “ensnaring both the heart and mind”* with its moving tale about a young man's confrontation with love and the loss of innocence.
*L.A. Times Book Review
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