Originally published in Switzerland and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading and shame in post-war Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"

The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre and post-war generations, between the guilty and the innocent and between words and silence. --R Ellis, Amazon.com

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

"... because I wanted a new life . . . , 26 Feb 2008
but did not know what it should be like."

Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.

After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?

Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.

Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.

In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.

The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator.

"Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]


"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, 06 Feb 2008
or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."
Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" takes us to a place where the sense of home is as strong as the strongest conjuration. His protagonist, Peter Debauer, has an acute, but unstated, sense of what a home should be but this acuity seems driven by the fact that all the hallmarks of a home are missing in his life. Peter was born during the war and raised in Germany during the post-war (WWII) years. His mother is emotionally distant and self-involved. His father is presumed to have been killed during WWII. As a child we usually grow up (or at least I did) hearing stories about our parents and extended family groups. Those stories, from the good, to the bad, and to the down right embarrassing, acted for me as an anchor that helped tie me emotionally to my extended family. I don't expect that my experience is unique. But this is post-war Germany, a world in which Germany's post-war baby boomers are burdened with the silence of their mothers and fathers. Children do not ask "what did you do in the war, daddy?" and, if they do they don't get an answer. Schlink writes of a world in which the sins of the fathers, the guilt of the mothers, are still fresh and too raw to be discussed with the children. This lack of an anchor leaves Peter adrift and at sea in a very real sense. His life seems to be one in which he is carried along by the tides. He flits from relationship to relationship, and his career seems equally unstable. This is not to say that Peter doesn't have relationships or that he isn't smart enough or accomplished enough to make a decent living. But the sense that something is missing in Peter is very strong even as it remains unexpressed. "Homecoming" is the story of Peter Debauer's odyssey, his inchoate search for a homecoming.

I used the word odyssey because "The Odyssey"is the centerpiece of the book's form and structure. Peter's most enjoyable moments come when he is sent by train to Switzerland to spend the summers with his paternal grandparents. During those summers he reads bits and pieces of manuscripts submitted to his grandfather for publication in a series of books published under the title "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and entertainment". Peter becomes obsessed with the story of a German solider trying to make his way back from a Soviet POW camp. The narrative of that story tracks that of The Odyssey. But the manuscript itself is incomplete and Peter begins a search for the rest of the story and the story's author that takes him on his own odyssey. He travels throughout Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates.

However, the manuscript's last pages are missing and, driven by the desire for resolution, Peter spends much of his adult life in a quest for both the author's identity and the novel's conclusion. Peter's search is interwoven in the story with the threads of his own life. Kept at arm's length by his mother, Peter keeps pressing for more information about his father. As Peter acquires more information about his father we see yet another Odyssey begin to emerge. As may be expected Peter's search for the author and for information about his father the reader and Peter discover connections that bring the threads even closer.

I was drawn to Homecoming but also found it to be a bit flawed, particularly in the latter portions of the book. However, those flaws (an ending that seemed a bit too pat for example and a climactic scene in a hotel that was pretty blatantly telegraphed to us in an earlier chapter) were outweighed by Schlink's prose and by a theme, a search for meaning by a generation when much of the past, a family-past that places our lives in context is withheld from us. Peter Debauer may not be the fully-formed adult we might prefer in our protagonists but that seems to be the point. The point is the journey and the angst and guilt that made the journey necessary. Home is a strong word and Bernhard Schlink's Homecoming shows how much can be lost when that sense of home is lost on an individual or on a generation. This was a very thoughtful book and well worth reading. L. Fleisig

Flights of Love sees Bernhard Schlink build on the success of his international-bestselling debut novel The Reader with a clutch of short stories that tell of the variety of love, distilled into seven splinters of narrative. Despite its title, the collection represents no great departure for Schlink, who continues in a similarly unflighty vein to explore his country's modern history, contrasting mid-life crises with utopian visions to discover unlikely shades of love, streaked with guilt, shame or unconscionable pride. The pick of the seven, the opening "Girl with Lizard", depicts a remote male character who fixates on a painting of his father's, which he is to discover, like his father, has a familiarly unsavoury past, and which he is impelled to exorcise. In the book's centrepiece "Sugar Peas", architect and amateur painter Thomas finds that his trio of lovers avenge themselves on his profligacy after he is left wheelchair-bound by an accident. "The Other Man" sees a widower corresponding with his dead wife's unwitting lover and finding comfort through acquaintance. Less successfully, "The Circumcision" sees the pretext of a German man and his New York Jewish girlfriend to ponder huge, chewy rhetoric on the problems of reconciling the past, almost absent-mindedly concocting an improbable denouement.

And this is the weakness of the collection. Too often, Schlink presents scenarios rather than scenes, more intent on dislocated dilemma than language. In keeping with his legal training, he discerns lines of attack perhaps more suited to a drama, or perhaps a courtroom drama, than fiction. There can be no doubting Schlink's storytelling acumen, or his undertaking to tackle the complicated identity of modern Germany. What are increasingly exposed, though, are the supporting mechanisms which frequently serve to reinforce, rather than challenge, our assumptions. Books such as Walter Abish's How German Is It and John Scott's The Architect have demonstrated how such preoccupations can be artfully whipped into stimulating fiction. Schlink's minimalist pieces, while well crafted, generally lack both intimacy and humour, resulting in unleavened fodder, weighed down by intent. --David Vincent

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

"... because I wanted a new life . . . , 26 Feb 2008
but did not know what it should be like."

Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.

After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?

Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.

Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.

In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.

The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator.

"Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]


"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, 06 Feb 2008
or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."
Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" takes us to a place where the sense of home is as strong as the strongest conjuration. His protagonist, Peter Debauer, has an acute, but unstated, sense of what a home should be but this acuity seems driven by the fact that all the hallmarks of a home are missing in his life. Peter was born during the war and raised in Germany during the post-war (WWII) years. His mother is emotionally distant and self-involved. His father is presumed to have been killed during WWII. As a child we usually grow up (or at least I did) hearing stories about our parents and extended family groups. Those stories, from the good, to the bad, and to the down right embarrassing, acted for me as an anchor that helped tie me emotionally to my extended family. I don't expect that my experience is unique. But this is post-war Germany, a world in which Germany's post-war baby boomers are burdened with the silence of their mothers and fathers. Children do not ask "what did you do in the war, daddy?" and, if they do they don't get an answer. Schlink writes of a world in which the sins of the fathers, the guilt of the mothers, are still fresh and too raw to be discussed with the children. This lack of an anchor leaves Peter adrift and at sea in a very real sense. His life seems to be one in which he is carried along by the tides. He flits from relationship to relationship, and his career seems equally unstable. This is not to say that Peter doesn't have relationships or that he isn't smart enough or accomplished enough to make a decent living. But the sense that something is missing in Peter is very strong even as it remains unexpressed. "Homecoming" is the story of Peter Debauer's odyssey, his inchoate search for a homecoming.

I used the word odyssey because "The Odyssey"is the centerpiece of the book's form and structure. Peter's most enjoyable moments come when he is sent by train to Switzerland to spend the summers with his paternal grandparents. During those summers he reads bits and pieces of manuscripts submitted to his grandfather for publication in a series of books published under the title "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and entertainment". Peter becomes obsessed with the story of a German solider trying to make his way back from a Soviet POW camp. The narrative of that story tracks that of The Odyssey. But the manuscript itself is incomplete and Peter begins a search for the rest of the story and the story's author that takes him on his own odyssey. He travels throughout Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates.

However, the manuscript's last pages are missing and, driven by the desire for resolution, Peter spends much of his adult life in a quest for both the author's identity and the novel's conclusion. Peter's search is interwoven in the story with the threads of his own life. Kept at arm's length by his mother, Peter keeps pressing for more information about his father. As Peter acquires more information about his father we see yet another Odyssey begin to emerge. As may be expected Peter's search for the author and for information about his father the reader and Peter discover connections that bring the threads even closer.

I was drawn to Homecoming but also found it to be a bit flawed, particularly in the latter portions of the book. However, those flaws (an ending that seemed a bit too pat for example and a climactic scene in a hotel that was pretty blatantly telegraphed to us in an earlier chapter) were outweighed by Schlink's prose and by a theme, a search for meaning by a generation when much of the past, a family-past that places our lives in context is withheld from us. Peter Debauer may not be the fully-formed adult we might prefer in our protagonists but that seems to be the point. The point is the journey and the angst and guilt that made the journey necessary. Home is a strong word and Bernhard Schlink's Homecoming shows how much can be lost when that sense of home is lost on an individual or on a generation. This was a very thoughtful book and well worth reading. L. Fleisig


A fantastic debut, 07 Apr 2003
Schlink's first novel is an unexpected jewel, and a book which poses serious questions about how much collective or individual blame society can take for atrocities such as the holocaust, and does so in a refreshing and beautiful way. Schlink airs some controvesial and unusual views, but has unerring moral judgement and I couldn't put the thing down till I'd finished it. The twist is well handled and the fact that Schlink doesn't embellish or judge will leave you thinking about this one for days.

An exploration of love, 07 Mar 2003
Bernard Schlink is a German professor of law at Humboldt University in Berlin and Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of four detective novels, but I came to read him when one of mine friend offered me The Reader.

In Flights of Love, Schlink continues his exploration of love with a collection of seven stories about love, not of love, neither are they love stories. Schlink dispassionately, sometime clinically dissects what love is about, what it makes us do, how it can overcome cultural barriers and prejudices, but also how dangerous it is. These stories are not only about love between a man and a woman but also about filial love (The Son) or idealised love ("Girl with Lizard").

In "Girl with Lizard", a young boy becomes obsessed with a painting that his mother used to call "that Jewish girl". A painting the boy sees standing between his mother and his father. Later, as he grows up and inherits the painting, the painting will stand between him and his girlfriends. A painting whose origin is mysterious. Where did his father get it? The boy knows that his father got it during the war, but how and why? What did his father do during the war? Obsessed with the painting the boy, now a young man, will go on a quest to find the secret hidden behind the girl and the lizard.

What would you do if one day, just after the passing away of your wife whom you dearly loved, you received a letter from her long-forgotten lover? Would you feel betrayed? Would you throw the letter away and try to forget? Or would you answer back and pretend you are the adulterous woman? For how long did she betray you? With whom? When? Why? Tremendous questions when she was everything for you, and when you believed it was reciprocal.

And what if you can't say no? Why couldn't you, like Thomas, have a wife and two mistresses and a successful professional life? Of course such a life requires very good organisation, especially when the three women live in different towns and know nothing about each other. Why can't you have all the "Sugar Peas"? The problem is that each of them wants every bit of you and of your love, and that's spoiling the sweets, your sweets. Then there is only one way to get out of this mess: running away. Until life brings you back to the three of them, sitting around you, looking at you ...

The most captivating story was "The Circumcision". A young German studying in New York falls in love with a young Jewish woman living there. Love will at first overcome the cultural differences, the past and the prejudices. But not for long.

Even if she has always been living in America, Sarah has inherited her past and with it a prejudice against the Germans because of what "they" did to her family in Germany during World War II. Whilst Andy tries to forget what his ancestors did and tries to show Sarah that the world has changed, their differences nevertheless grow to a crescendo.

Everything Andy does is so "German" to Sarah. From his orderly life to his research interest: Utopian collectivism "the [German] fascination of transforming chaos into cosmos". Sarah become obsessed by the Germans, from the tidy German towns to certain German turns of phrase such as "Polish sloppiness" or "Jewish haste".

At first Andy tries to justify the past, his ancestors' behaviour, or at least to explain. But Sarah can't understand, she can't accept what she thinks is unacceptable. Andy can't accept Sarah's prejudices: "You already know everything about the Germans. And you already know everything about me." But " ... how many Germans do you know?"

"Enough, and along with those that we've been happy to get to know, there are the ones we'd have rather not got to know, but got to know anyway," replies Sarah.

Andy realises he has no chance and that there is only one way he can save his love and them as a couple; to give up and to decide that they are on the same ground, to keep his thoughts to himself. He will trim his love smaller and smaller.

This story is the best. It shows how love could be a fragile object and at the same time a dangerous one. How it could help bring two people together but also keep them at a distance. Exacerbate personalities but also erase them. Sarah is obsessed by a past that she hasn't met, and Andy by the same past and a guilt that has been laid upon him and from which he tries to escape. It is a very modern and relevant story in our days of conflict between people who think they know everything about each other even if they have never met.

Bernard Schlink's style is not sentimental; it is realistic, sometimes cold, maybe as the result of a career in law? Above all, Bernard Schlink is honest and pictures life as it is, and more than once I am sure one can identify very easily with the characters. I highly recommend "The Reader" and also "Flights of Love", especially "The Circumcision".

A remarkable collection of short stories, 24 May 2002
Those of you who enjoyed "The Reader' will love this collection of short stories, all of which are abour relationships or obsessions. Some of them are haunting in the beauty, others a little odd-ball. All of them are captivating.

There's something about the quality of contemporary German writers that is quite unique, although I can't quite put my finger on what it is. But these stories are quite deep and prfound but remain easily accesible and a joy to read.

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

"... because I wanted a new life . . . , 26 Feb 2008
but did not know what it should be like."

Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.

After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?

Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.

Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.

In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.

The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator.

"Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]


"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, 06 Feb 2008
or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."
Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" takes us to a place where the sense of home is as strong as the strongest conjuration. His protagonist, Peter Debauer, has an acute, but unstated, sense of what a home should be but this acuity seems driven by the fact that all the hallmarks of a home are missing in his life. Peter was born during the war and raised in Germany during the post-war (WWII) years. His mother is emotionally distant and self-involved. His father is presumed to have been killed during WWII. As a child we usually grow up (or at least I did) hearing stories about our parents and extended family groups. Those stories, from the good, to the bad, and to the down right embarrassing, acted for me as an anchor that helped tie me emotionally to my extended family. I don't expect that my experience is unique. But this is post-war Germany, a world in which Germany's post-war baby boomers are burdened with the silence of their mothers and fathers. Children do not ask "what did you do in the war, daddy?" and, if they do they don't get an answer. Schlink writes of a world in which the sins of the fathers, the guilt of the mothers, are still fresh and too raw to be discussed with the children. This lack of an anchor leaves Peter adrift and at sea in a very real sense. His life seems to be one in which he is carried along by the tides. He flits from relationship to relationship, and his career seems equally unstable. This is not to say that Peter doesn't have relationships or that he isn't smart enough or accomplished enough to make a decent living. But the sense that something is missing in Peter is very strong even as it remains unexpressed. "Homecoming" is the story of Peter Debauer's odyssey, his inchoate search for a homecoming.

I used the word odyssey because "The Odyssey"is the centerpiece of the book's form and structure. Peter's most enjoyable moments come when he is sent by train to Switzerland to spend the summers with his paternal grandparents. During those summers he reads bits and pieces of manuscripts submitted to his grandfather for publication in a series of books published under the title "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and entertainment". Peter becomes obsessed with the story of a German solider trying to make his way back from a Soviet POW camp. The narrative of that story tracks that of The Odyssey. But the manuscript itself is incomplete and Peter begins a search for the rest of the story and the story's author that takes him on his own odyssey. He travels throughout Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates.

However, the manuscript's last pages are missing and, driven by the desire for resolution, Peter spends much of his adult life in a quest for both the author's identity and the novel's conclusion. Peter's search is interwoven in the story with the threads of his own life. Kept at arm's length by his mother, Peter keeps pressing for more information about his father. As Peter acquires more information about his father we see yet another Odyssey begin to emerge. As may be expected Peter's search for the author and for information about his father the reader and Peter discover connections that bring the threads even closer.

I was drawn to Homecoming but also found it to be a bit flawed, particularly in the latter portions of the book. However, those flaws (an ending that seemed a bit too pat for example and a climactic scene in a hotel that was pretty blatantly telegraphed to us in an earlier chapter) were outweighed by Schlink's prose and by a theme, a search for meaning by a generation when much of the past, a family-past that places our lives in context is withheld from us. Peter Debauer may not be the fully-formed adult we might prefer in our protagonists but that seems to be the point. The point is the journey and the angst and guilt that made the journey necessary. Home is a strong word and Bernhard Schlink's Homecoming shows how much can be lost when that sense of home is lost on an individual or on a generation. This was a very thoughtful book and well worth reading. L. Fleisig


A fantastic debut, 07 Apr 2003
Schlink's first novel is an unexpected jewel, and a book which poses serious questions about how much collective or individual blame society can take for atrocities such as the holocaust, and does so in a refreshing and beautiful way. Schlink airs some controvesial and unusual views, but has unerring moral judgement and I couldn't put the thing down till I'd finished it. The twist is well handled and the fact that Schlink doesn't embellish or judge will leave you thinking about this one for days.

An exploration of love, 07 Mar 2003
Bernard Schlink is a German professor of law at Humboldt University in Berlin and Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of four detective novels, but I came to read him when one of mine friend offered me The Reader.

In Flights of Love, Schlink continues his exploration of love with a collection of seven stories about love, not of love, neither are they love stories. Schlink dispassionately, sometime clinically dissects what love is about, what it makes us do, how it can overcome cultural barriers and prejudices, but also how dangerous it is. These stories are not only about love between a man and a woman but also about filial love (The Son) or idealised love ("Girl with Lizard").

In "Girl with Lizard", a young boy becomes obsessed with a painting that his mother used to call "that Jewish girl". A painting the boy sees standing between his mother and his father. Later, as he grows up and inherits the painting, the painting will stand between him and his girlfriends. A painting whose origin is mysterious. Where did his father get it? The boy knows that his father got it during the war, but how and why? What did his father do during the war? Obsessed with the painting the boy, now a young man, will go on a quest to find the secret hidden behind the girl and the lizard.

What would you do if one day, just after the passing away of your wife whom you dearly loved, you received a letter from her long-forgotten lover? Would you feel betrayed? Would you throw the letter away and try to forget? Or would you answer back and pretend you are the adulterous woman? For how long did she betray you? With whom? When? Why? Tremendous questions when she was everything for you, and when you believed it was reciprocal.

And what if you can't say no? Why couldn't you, like Thomas, have a wife and two mistresses and a successful professional life? Of course such a life requires very good organisation, especially when the three women live in different towns and know nothing about each other. Why can't you have all the "Sugar Peas"? The problem is that each of them wants every bit of you and of your love, and that's spoiling the sweets, your sweets. Then there is only one way to get out of this mess: running away. Until life brings you back to the three of them, sitting around you, looking at you ...

The most captivating story was "The Circumcision". A young German studying in New York falls in love with a young Jewish woman living there. Love will at first overcome the cultural differences, the past and the prejudices. But not for long.

Even if she has always been living in America, Sarah has inherited her past and with it a prejudice against the Germans because of what "they" did to her family in Germany during World War II. Whilst Andy tries to forget what his ancestors did and tries to show Sarah that the world has changed, their differences nevertheless grow to a crescendo.

Everything Andy does is so "German" to Sarah. From his orderly life to his research interest: Utopian collectivism "the [German] fascination of transforming chaos into cosmos". Sarah become obsessed by the Germans, from the tidy German towns to certain German turns of phrase such as "Polish sloppiness" or "Jewish haste".

At first Andy tries to justify the past, his ancestors' behaviour, or at least to explain. But Sarah can't understand, she can't accept what she thinks is unacceptable. Andy can't accept Sarah's prejudices: "You already know everything about the Germans. And you already know everything about me." But " ... how many Germans do you know?"

"Enough, and along with those that we've been happy to get to know, there are the ones we'd have rather not got to know, but got to know anyway," replies Sarah.

Andy realises he has no chance and that there is only one way he can save his love and them as a couple; to give up and to decide that they are on the same ground, to keep his thoughts to himself. He will trim his love smaller and smaller.

This story is the best. It shows how love could be a fragile object and at the same time a dangerous one. How it could help bring two people together but also keep them at a distance. Exacerbate personalities but also erase them. Sarah is obsessed by a past that she hasn't met, and Andy by the same past and a guilt that has been laid upon him and from which he tries to escape. It is a very modern and relevant story in our days of conflict between people who think they know everything about each other even if they have never met.

Bernard Schlink's style is not sentimental; it is realistic, sometimes cold, maybe as the result of a career in law? Above all, Bernard Schlink is honest and pictures life as it is, and more than once I am sure one can identify very easily with the characters. I highly recommend "The Reader" and also "Flights of Love", especially "The Circumcision".

A remarkable collection of short stories, 24 May 2002
Those of you who enjoyed "The Reader' will love this collection of short stories, all of which are abour relationships or obsessions. Some of them are haunting in the beauty, others a little odd-ball. All of them are captivating.

There's something about the quality of contemporary German writers that is quite unique, although I can't quite put my finger on what it is. But these stories are quite deep and prfound but remain easily accesible and a joy to read.

A likeable, German detective., 30 Oct 2004
This is a great book and I would recommend it especially to lovers of Euro-crime novels. Bernhard Schlink has already achieved renown through his powerful study of the holocaust. I was surprised to learn that he is a writer of detective novels as well and, having read this one, surprised that we in the English speaking world did not get to know about him earlier. The story is written in the first person from the point of view of Gerhard Self, ex lawyer and now Private DEtective who is getting on in years. He reminnded me a little bit of Chandler and Mosley and other writers of that type. The story centres on goings on at a Chemical plant where someone seems to be messing about with the computer system, causing chaos and money losses. Self is called in by his old friend who is also the boss to try and sort things out. However, though he solves this problem he soon realises that he has only scratched the surface of the troubles and when someone is murdered he is led on an investigative trail that takes him right back to the second world war. Self is a lovely man with a good sense of humour and as usual with this type of fiction we learn about his personal life as well. One thing I particularly liked was the detail given to small things which made the whole book quite evocative. I liked to imagine his jouneys through Germany and Europe as well as America. The only thing I wasn't too sure about was the end. You might feel justice is done but what happens is certainly unusual in detective fiction. Of course I won't tell you what that is. You will just have to read it for yourself. Please do! It is a great book and I was sad to put it down.

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

"... because I wanted a new life . . . , 26 Feb 2008
but did not know what it should be like."

Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.

After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?

Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.

Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.

In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.

The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for example, argue for shifting guilt from the perpetrator to the victim, or from actor to commentator.

"Homecoming" is a complex and profound book and despite its fluid conversational style, should be read carefully with attention to the clues that, while appearing haphazard and scattered at first, combine into a meaningful whole. Peter Gebauer may not come across as a strong or likeable character, yet Schlink has succeeded in creating in him an excellent example of the type of person confronted with the challenges of his time. The topical political and philosophical controversies that are brought to light are well integrated into the narrative. They encourage pause for reflection without losing or sidelining the pre-eminent theme of the story. [Friederike Knabe]


"Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, 06 Feb 2008
or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration."
Charles Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Bernhard Schlink's "Homecoming" takes us to a place where the sense of home is as strong as the strongest conjuration. His protagonist, Peter Debauer, has an acute, but unstated, sense of what a home should be but this acuity seems driven by the fact that all the hallmarks of a home are missing in his life. Peter was born during the war and raised in Germany during the post-war (WWII) years. His mother is emotionally distant and self-involved. His father is presumed to have been killed during WWII. As a child we usually grow up (or at least I did) hearing stories about our parents and extended family groups. Those stories, from the good, to the bad, and to the down right embarrassing, acted for me as an anchor that helped tie me emotionally to my extended family. I don't expect that my experience is unique. But this is post-war Germany, a world in which Germany's post-war baby boomers are burdened with the silence of their mothers and fathers. Children do not ask "what did you do in the war, daddy?" and, if they do they don't get an answer. Schlink writes of a world in which the sins of the fathers, the guilt of the mothers, are still fresh and too raw to be discussed with the children. This lack of an anchor leaves Peter adrift and at sea in a very real sense. His life seems to be one in which he is carried along by the tides. He flits from relationship to relationship, and his career seems equally unstable. This is not to say that Peter doesn't have relationships or that he isn't smart enough or accomplished enough to make a decent living. But the sense that something is missing in Peter is very strong even as it remains unexpressed. "Homecoming" is the story of Peter Debauer's odyssey, his inchoate search for a homecoming.

I used the word odyssey because "The Odyssey"is the centerpiece of the book's form and structure. Peter's most enjoyable moments come when he is sent by train to Switzerland to spend the summers with his paternal grandparents. During those summers he reads bits and pieces of manuscripts submitted to his grandfather for publication in a series of books published under the title "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and entertainment". Peter becomes obsessed with the story of a German solider trying to make his way back from a Soviet POW camp. The narrative of that story tracks that of The Odyssey. But the manuscript itself is incomplete and Peter begins a search for the rest of the story and the story's author that takes him on his own odyssey. He travels throughout Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates.

However, the manuscript's last pages are missing and, driven by the desire for resolution, Peter spends much of his adult life in a quest for both the author's identity and the novel's conclusion. Peter's search is interwoven in the story with the threads of his own life. Kept at arm's length by his mother, Peter keeps pressing for more information about his father. As Peter acquires more information about his father we see yet another Odyssey begin to emerge. As may be expected Peter's search for the author and for information about his father the reader and Peter discover connections that bring the threads even closer.

I was drawn to Homecoming but also found it to be a bit flawed, particularly in the latter portions of the book. However, those flaws (an ending that seemed a bit too pat for example and a climactic scene in a hotel that was pretty blatantly telegraphed to us in an earlier chapter) were outweighed by Schlink's prose and by a theme, a search for meaning by a generation when much of the past, a family-past that places our lives in context is withheld from us. Peter Debauer may not be the fully-formed adult we might prefer in our protagonists but that seems to be the point. The point is the journey and the angst and guilt that made the journey necessary. Home is a strong word and Bernhard Schlink's Homecoming shows how much can be lost when that sense of home is lost on an individual or on a generation. This was a very thoughtful book and well worth reading. L. Fleisig


A fantastic debut, 07 Apr 2003
Schlink's first novel is an unexpected jewel, and a book which poses serious questions about how much collective or individual blame society can take for atrocities such as the holocaust, and does so in a refreshing and beautiful way. Schlink airs some controvesial and unusual views, but has unerring moral judgement and I couldn't put the thing down till I'd finished it. The twist is well handled and the fact that Schlink doesn't embellish or judge will leave you thinking about this one for days.

An exploration of love, 07 Mar 2003
Bernard Schlink is a German professor of law at Humboldt University in Berlin and Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of four detective novels, but I came to read him when one of mine friend offered me The Reader.

In Flights of Love, Schlink continues his exploration of love with a collection of seven stories about love, not of love, neither are they love stories. Schlink dispassionately, sometime clinically dissects what love is about, what it makes us do, how it can overcome cultural barriers and prejudices, but also how dangerous it is. These stories are not only about love between a man and a woman but also about filial love (The Son) or idealised love ("Girl with Lizard").

In "Girl with Lizard", a young boy becomes obsessed with a painting that his mother used to call "that Jewish girl". A painting the boy sees standing between his mother and his father. Later, as he grows up and inherits the painting, the painting will stand between him and his girlfriends. A painting whose origin is mysterious. Where did his father get it? The boy knows that his father got it during the war, but how and why? What did his father do during the war? Obsessed with the painting the boy, now a young man, will go on a quest to find the secret hidden behind the girl and the lizard.

What would you do if one day, just after the passing away of your wife whom you dearly loved, you received a letter from her long-forgotten lover? Would you feel betrayed? Would you throw the letter away and try to forget? Or would you answer back and pretend you are the adulterous woman? For how long did she betray you? With whom? When? Why? Tremendous questions when she was everything for you, and when you believed it was reciprocal.

And what if you can't say no? Why couldn't you, like Thomas, have a wife and two mistresses and a successful professional life? Of course such a life requires very good organisation, especially when the three women live in different towns and know nothing about each other. Why can't you have all the "Sugar Peas"? The problem is that each of them wants every bit of you and of your love, and that's spoiling the sweets, your sweets. Then there is only one way to get out of this mess: running away. Until life brings you back to the three of them, sitting around you, looking at you ...

The most captivating story was "The Circumcision". A young German studying in New York falls in love with a young Jewish woman living there. Love will at first overcome the cultural differences, the past and the prejudices. But not for long.

Even if she has always been living in America, Sarah has inherited her past and with it a prejudice against the Germans because of what "they" did to her family in Germany during World War II. Whilst Andy tries to forget what his ancestors did and tries to show Sarah that the world has changed, their differences nevertheless grow to a crescendo.

Everything Andy does is so "German" to Sarah. From his orderly life to his research interest: Utopian collectivism "the [German] fascination of transforming chaos into cosmos". Sarah become obsessed by the Germans, from the tidy German towns to certain German turns of phrase such as "Polish sloppiness" or "Jewish haste".

At first Andy tries to justify the past, his ancestors' behaviour, or at least to explain. But Sarah can't understand, she can't accept what she thinks is unacceptable. Andy can't accept Sarah's prejudices: "You already know everything about the Germans. And you already know everything about me." But " ... how many Germans do you know?"

"Enough, and along with those that we've been happy to get to know, there are the ones we'd have rather not got to know, but got to know anyway," replies Sarah.

Andy realises he has no chance and that there is only one way he can save his love and them as a couple; to give up and to decide that they are on the same ground, to keep his thoughts to himself. He will trim his love smaller and smaller.

This story is the best. It shows how love could be a fragile object and at the same time a dangerous one. How it could help bring two people together but also keep them at a distance. Exacerbate personalities but also erase them. Sarah is obsessed by a past that she hasn't met, and Andy by the same past and a guilt that has been laid upon him and from which he tries to escape. It is a very modern and relevant story in our days of conflict between people who think they know everything about each other even if they have never met.

Bernard Schlink's style is not sentimental; it is realistic, sometimes cold, maybe as the result of a career in law? Above all, Bernard Schlink is honest and pictures life as it is, and more than once I am sure one can identify very easily with the characters. I highly recommend "The Reader" and also "Flights of Love", especially "The Circumcision".

A remarkable collection of short stories, 24 May 2002
Those of you who enjoyed "The Reader' will love this collection of short stories, all of which are abour relationships or obsessions. Some of them are haunting in the beauty, others a little odd-ball. All of them are captivating.

There's something about the quality of contemporary German writers that is quite unique, although I can't quite put my finger on what it is. But these stories are quite deep and prfound but remain easily accesible and a joy to read.

A likeable, German detective., 30 Oct 2004
This is a great book and I would recommend it especially to lovers of Euro-crime novels. Bernhard Schlink has already achieved renown through his powerful study of the holocaust. I was surprised to learn that he is a writer of detective novels as well and, having read this one, surprised that we in the English speaking world did not get to know about him earlier. The story is written in the first person from the point of view of Gerhard Self, ex lawyer and now Private DEtective who is getting on in years. He reminnded me a little bit of Chandler and Mosley and other writers of that type. The story centres on goings on at a Chemical plant where someone seems to be messing about with the computer system, causing chaos and money losses. Self is called in by his old friend who is also the boss to try and sort things out. However, though he solves this problem he soon realises that he has only scratched the surface of the troubles and when someone is murdered he is led on an investigative trail that takes him right back to the second world war. Self is a lovely man with a good sense of humour and as usual with this type of fiction we learn about his personal life as well. One thing I particularly liked was the detail given to small things which made the whole book quite evocative. I liked to imagine his jouneys through Germany and Europe as well as America. The only thing I wasn't too sure about was the end. You might feel justice is done but what happens is certainly unusual in detective fiction. Of course I won't tell you what that is. You will just have to read it for yourself. Please do! It is a great book and I was sad to put it down.

Self's Deception, 22 Oct 2007
Crime novels - be they mystery, murder, suspense, thriller - require an interesting protagonist to work effectively. Indeed, sometimes the crime itself may take a backseat to the adventures and doings of the main character. Bernhard Schlink's new novel, Self's Deception, follow this route. It is Gerhard Self, the protagonist, who makes the story, and not the crime and certainly not the mystery. Self is introspective, ironic, slightly bitter but aware of himself in a world that is puzzling, historic, cultural, intellectual, mysterious, vapid, violent. Unfortunately this reliance on character is so strong in Self's Deception that the plot, that rambling, confused mess, suffers too much. Gerhard Self is an interesting enough fellow that he did not need a fairly average thriller plot on which to hang his cap, but because Schlink has seen fit to throw him in the midst of terrorism, murder and intrigue, that is what he has to do. Character, finally, takes a backstage to plot.

Gerhard Self was once a Nazi prosecutor, and is now a private investigator in his late sixties. He is calm under pressure, inward and introspective about almost everything, and seems to take more joy in the intellectual pursuits of his love than he does in his work. When he is hired to find Leo Salgar, the disappeared daughter of a powerful Bonn bureaucrat, Self instead wanders about having conversations, thinking about chess, drinking coffee and wondering about the world. But this is endearing, a wholly effective quality for a private eye to possess. The nature of his trade naturally requires lengthy periods of waiting and watching, sitting in cars drinking coffee for hours on end. Introspection is a natural 'curse' in this case, and Self indulges at every stage. Perhaps because he is interested in classical music, literature and the history of Germany post World War II, Self comes across as intelligent and charismatic. Indeed, following his thoughts often proves more entertaining than following the plot.

In true mystery style, Leo Salgar's story was not completely revealed by her father. On top of that, is the man who hired Self really her father at all? Self is paid staggering sums in quick succession to remain on the case, in envelopes that are unmarked. He is given a number that is always connected to an answering machine, and proves to be in the abandoned, rented shop of someone who seems to have no relation to Salgar at all. We are given false clues, true clues, red herrings, dead ends, bullets in lounges, philosophising, land rent advice, chess, a wedding, the list goes on. How much of all this applies to the plot? Not a great deal. How much applies to the main character? More, but still, there is a lot of superfluous information thrown at the reader. For instance one character, an ageing ladies man, has decided to marry. On the day of his wedding, he is stabbed by the brother of his soon to be wife. Later in hospital, he reveals to Self that he finds the idea of chasing women less desirable than before. Interesting, sure. Relevant? Not at all. This little vignette has no bearing whatsoever on the main plot, and comes towards the end of the novel, when the plot should be ratcheting up in intensity and suspense. It is little missteps like this which harm the novel more than help.

There are sixty-eight chapters spread over around three hundred and fifty pages. That comes to around five pages per chapter, which isn't much at all. Each chapter begins and ends a sequence of events, the result of which is that while reading, we are rushed along, racing through chapter after chapter of event, information, event, exposition, event. It is an exhaustive, unrewarding way to frame a story, because the reader is never allowed a chance to relax and enjoy the character. And, because Self is more important than the plot, we notice particularly just how much racing around to nowhere at all we are doing. On the rare occasion that the novel does slow down to allow us time with Self, it is completely enjoyable. If only Schlink had seen fit to expand, extend, enhance. Slow down, even. There are many little quirks of characters that pop up, only to disappear once the five pages of their chapter is done. Nagelsbach, the Chief Inspector friend of Self, is a hobbiest model maker, building miniature replicas of the great sculptures, and then architectural achievements, of European geniuses. '...his mission in life, to which he was going to devote his retirement, was to build a model of the Vatican. ...What could I tell him? That art was more a matter of creation than an attempt to portray reality? That in life the goal wasn't as important as the journey?' Self uses the quirks as a way to think on matters weighty. We can only wish that the author allowed himself the luxury of slowing down to further explore these surface thoughts, to create depth in what is an interesting character.

The climax of the novel comes about rather strangely. The short chapters and rapid fire pace are so confusing that by the end, it is unclear what is the problem, why there is a problem, and who is responsible. Self jumps in and out of jail, characters who were not a part of the plot suddenly loom large, characters who were a large part of the plot disappear. There doesn't seem to be a thread on which to hang the plot. The dénouement, similarly, is confusing and too short.

Schlink has wrapped a great character around a thriller without a plot. He should have either focused more upon Gerhard Self and less upon murders, terrorism and suspense, or made Self less interesting, and increased the thriller aspect. As it stands, we are left with a novel that does two things moderately well, but nothing excellently. Confusions, awkward jumping, horrible pacing, poor plotting and a wonderful character are the hallmarks of this game.

Superb, absorbing book, 10 Nov 2008
I picked this up because it was recommended reading on one of my Open University courses.

It's the story of a young man who falls for an older woman. I had seen a comment that it was a holocaust book, and was a bit baffled after reading the first part (the book is in 3 parts). However, this build up works extremely well, as it gives a good feel for an "ordinary" person getting caught up in the perpetration of the holocaust.

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style, which is very descriptive, and the story had me hooked. There are several moments that surprise, and I think it's a while since I read a book which evoked such a variety of strong emotions.

In summary - a fantastic, gripping read, which you will be struggling to put down.

One of the best books I have read recently, 18 Oct 2008
This book is about the legacy of the Third Reich and concentration camps but deals with much more than that. It is about one's relationship with other people and one's own past. It explores the power of social mores and self-image. The writing style is matter of fact and very enjoyable, easy to read yet deep in meaning. It made me want to read more by Schlink, and in the original language!

One of the best books ever, 18 Mar 2008
A beautiful book. Quietly, unassumingly, it nudges and insinuates itself into your heart. Explores the grey areas of morality and the spectra of human psyches with incredible sophistication. Is a rare example of a novel that feels whole, and doesn't sag towards the end.

Maybe something got lost in translation, 25 Jan 2008
When Michael was fifteen, he began an affair with a middle-aged woman named Hanna. They shared little beyond the physical relationship; she was not a talker or a thinker as he was, but she did seem to enjoy it when he read to her. One day she disappeared without a word, only to surface years later when she was on trial for crimes against humanity.

The writing style of this book is similar to Albert Camus' "The Stranger," where the main character narrates the events of his life without passion or sympathy, in a dulled, distant, vacant voice. The first half of the book is fairly interesting with his steamy but unemotional affair with this mysterious and strangely callous woman. I had to force myself to finish the second half, though, which explains her disappearance, trial, and the next eighteen years, because the monotone narration got really old and boring.

It felt like the author was trying to be shocking and profound with his detached storytelling, but I was not impressed. This would have made a very interesting short story, but I found it a tedious book.

The Reader, 02 Oct 2007
The Reader is a subtle, thought-provoking work that continues - but does not quite belong to - a tradition of Holocaust literature. The novel very cleverly raises questions about the nature of complicity and the boundaries of responsibility. It also examines the idea of collective 'amnesia' and its consquential twin, collective guilt. It achieves this through a deceptively simple narrative that enables a degree of analysis and discourse without the author having to overtly theorise. The narrative carries both a metaphorical and emotional weight that is quietly devestating without having to depict the horrors of the concentration camps in explicit detail.

The writing, economic and sometimes a little stark, can be read as a little cold, dispassionate. But more often it is devestatingly precise. However, there are moments when the language gets a little glitchy, and you suspect something has been lost in the translation. Overall though, the novel is both intensely sad and mentally stimulating, sustenance for the heart and the head. A modern classic.

"... because I wanted a new life . . . , 26 Feb 2008
but did not know what it should be like."

Most children growing up knowing little about an absent father will at some stage seek clues from the past in order to comprehend their own persona. The quest to fill gaps and to identify with their own behaviour may reveal unpleasant surprises. These can be especially disturbing for those growing up after a war during which their fathers may have condoned or even committed atrocities. In "Homecoming", Bernhard Schlink translates this complex theme into an engaging, multilayered tale, focusing on another sensitive topic of recent German history.

After "The Reader's"[1995] worldwide success, expectations for this follow-up novel have been predictably high. In the earlier book, the protagonist was presented as an accidental spectator and partaker in an older woman's exposure as a concentration camp guard. Here, Schlink couches the uncovering of an older generation's deceitful behaviour within a first-person's account of an active, at times obsessive, pursuit of a fictional character, its author, and indirectly of the protagonist's father. The author creates in Peter Debauer a modern-day Odysseus, who roams from place to place, unable to accept his life and "come home". Will he, eventually, find out what he was searching for - about the unknown figures and, especially, about himself?

Peter recalls his childhood memories fluctuating between those of his reserved and strict mother and of idyllic vacations at his grandparents' place in Switzerland. The mother avoided her son's questions about his father beyond the bare minimum: he had died during the war. His father's parents were not much better, and while sharing stories from their son's childhood, they omitted any reference to him beyond his student years. The lack of information had disturbed the boy, yet he had felt incapable of asking for more. On the other hand, he enjoyed his grandfather's tales of military campaigns and soldiers' homecoming stories. Schlink uses the grandfather's authority to raise contentious issues like honour and valour explained to the boy in the context of recent history. Accounts of German soldiers' tortuous travels in reaching home after escaping Russian POW camps were popular at the time and featured in the pulp fiction series that the grandparents published.

Despite prohibiting instructions, Peter secretly read parts of one such story on the galleys his grandparents had given him as scrap paper. Unfortunately, several chapters and the ending were missing. What had happened after the hero, Karl, reached home only to find his wife with young children and another man? Was it fiction or the author's personal experience? Coming across the fragment as an adult during a discontented period in his life, Peter's curiosity is reawakened to find the rest of the story and to trace its author. Coincidences facilitated his task as he put his mind to compiling the diverse pieces of evidence. Some clues challenged his up till then laissez-faire attitude to his emotional life, while others tested his political frame of reference. The more he found, the more he sensed some familiarity with the place to which Karl returned. Peter's new romantic interest, while adding new pieces to the puzzle, nonetheless also interfered with his pursuing the mystery.

In addition to applying Ulysses' Odyssey as a metaphor for Peter's quest, Schlink applies its structure to different levels of the narrative. As Peter's own life emulates the fictitious Odysseus, Peter's personal character adapts and changes as the situation or his obsession appear to require. Not surprisingly, given Schlink's own dedication to the profession and the specific topic he discusses, his protagonist joins the league of legal researchers. Schlink places Peter into historical contexts such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In its aftermath archives were opened that brought much disturbing evidence to light. Mirroring the author's own experience, Berlin has a profound impact on Peter. It reveals another facet of his personality. Continuing his search there, he becomes aware of correlations between the composition of the fiction fragment and some academic legal texts, justifying fascistic ideology. This in turn leads him to new clues as to the author's identity. Drawing on several known contemporary cases of successful ideological turncoats, Schlink develops one such character into the primary counterpart to Peter. While he feels more repulsed by than attracted to this potential opponent, Peter devises a scheme to unmask him that takes him eventually to New York.

The author doesn't shy away from touching on some weighty topics that have been close to his jurist's heart for many years. He draws attention to some dubious legalistic philosophy and practice prevalent during the Third Reich and still persisting in some quarters, which, for exam