The Reader – 9781399603232

The 30th anniversary edition of the classic international bestseller, with a new afterword from Bernhard Schlink’A masterly work. Read this and read it again’ – Observer’A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of German conscience’ – Independent’Examines the nature of understanding and tests the limits of forgiveness’ – TimesFor 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused.

For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realise that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved is a criminal.

Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does – Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. The Reader is an international bestseller and a true modern classic, the essential Holocaust novel, examining the gap between Germany’s pre- and post-war generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence.

‘For generations to come people will be marvelling over The Reader’ – Evening Standard