Contextulising THE READER

1. ContextulisingTHE READER BY BERNHARD SCHLINK

2. Interviews with Bernhard Schlink • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsbptLzHye4 • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLqmlQVLS4E

3. About The Reader • The Reader (Der Vorleser) written by Bernhard Schlink, German law professor and judge in 1995 • The Reader became the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list • Has been translated into 37 other languages and is part of college level courses on Holocaust literature • Whilst the book has enjoyed huge international success it has come in for criticism along the lines that:

4. “…it is more concerned to establish Hanna as victim than as perpetrator” (William Collins Donahue) • “[in the figures of both Hanna and the narrator Michael Berg is a view of] Germany as victim” (Omer Bartov) • “[The Reader] creates a single homogenized condition of victimhood” (Jeremy Adler) • “[The Reader] is ‘Holo-Kitsch’ (Willi Winkler) • “Contemptible…Disgusting” (Adler) • “The poisonous fruit of canting condescension” (Frederic Raphael)

5. “…illiteracy cannot serve as an explanation for cooperating in and committing criminal acts” (Ernestine Schlant)

6. About the Author • Bernhard Schlink was born in Grossdornberg, Germany in 1944 to a German father and Swiss mother • He grew up in university town of Heidelberg and studied Law at Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin • Schlink’s field of law is constitutional law where is he a professor and author • Schlink also works as a judge with the Constitutional Law Court in Bonn. He says: “I had a belief in justice and rationality that in fact was a secularised version of my parents’ belief in God. Growing older I am losing that kind of belief.”

7. Schlink became a successful writer of mystery novels from 1987 onwards. He says: “My mysteries are not entirely orthodox insofar as they don’t just tell the story of crime, they also deal with recent German history.” • The Reader was a departure in style for Schlink. He says: “The Reader is one of the first books, I think, that addresses how the generation that came after deals with what the previous generation did.”

8. What Schlink has said about The Reader • On the way modern Germans approach the problem of their past and their immediate ancestors: “It’s been one of the big subjects for my generation. For many families it’s a personal issue, because it pits fathers against their children.” “My generation and also the generation after mine, wanted something that deals with the question of how we cope with the Holocaust and the participation of our role models in it.”

9. On the novel as a reflection of German culture today and as an effect of reunification: “There are new concerns, new interests, and new questions about how the rest of Europe and America will live with a unified Germany…the question of how one deals with the past is again a very real, up to date question with the aftermath of the collapse of Communism…we all have to recognize that Germany is a nation with a particular past, and we all have to cope with that past.”