After, they have sex, and Michael falls in love. He helps her bring up coal and gets dirty. He can’t stop thinking about her, so he returns to her apartment.

Hanna catches him looking at her, and Michael runs away. In her apartment, Michael watches her iron her underwear and spies on her as she changes. Michael doesn’t plan to see the woman again, but his mother thinks he should bring her flowers and thank her. He throws up near an apartment building, and an older, unnamed woman cleans him up and takes him home. In Part 1, Michael Berg, a 15-year-old boy in West Germany, is sick with hepatitis. The study guide refers to an eBook version of the 2008 Vintage International edition, translated by Carol Brown Janeway.Ĭontent Warning: This guide summarizes and discusses suicide, statutory rape, the Holocaust, and Nazi brutality, which feature in the source text. The book touches on themes like secrets, memory, and feelings, as well as motifs like guilt. It chronicles the intense affair that begins when Hanna is 36 and Michael is 15. The novel is also, however problematically, a romance. In 2008, the book was adapted into a film with the English actress Kate Winslet playing the role of Hanna Schmitz.Īs Hanna is a former Nazi on trial in West Germany, the book qualifies as historical fiction-it fictionalizes real-life events. Translated editions of The Reader won several international prizes, including the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy and the Prix Laure Bataillon in France.

The German newspaper Abendzeitung named the book Stern des Jahres (Star of the Year), and it was also awarded the 1998 Hans Fallada Prize, given to works that address social or political issues. Two years later, an English version arrived in the United States, and it became a bestseller and a selection for Oprah's Book Club. Law professor Bernhard Schlink published The Reader ( Der Vorleser) in Germany in 1995.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink