The Reader

This novel has become famous as one of the most piercingly intelligent examinations of the dark cloud which still hangs over Germany - the cloud of guilt for the Holocaust, felt sometimes unconsciously by a generation whose parents or grandparents were, however indirectly, involved. After the Second World War, Michael, a German schoolboy, gets to know a woman bus conductor who seduces him and leads him into a world of joyous sensuality shadowed only by the uncertainty of her temper. She encourages him to read to her - and it is only when he realizes that she is illiterate that their relationship becomes a little clearer, but not more stable. They lose touch with each other, and when, as a university student, he attends a war crimes tribunal, he sees her in the dock. The story is almost simplistic, the narrative as clear and unsentimental as the style. The reader is drawn into the story slowly but powerfully, empathizing strongly with the narrator, Michael. The way in which he feels his way towards forgiveness not only for his former mistress, but for himself, is the kernel of an extraordinary book which weds philosophy and narrative seamlessly, clearly illuminating the tangled motives which lie behind our ignorance and our censure. (Kirkus UK)