Great product!Product DescriptionHailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader?? this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets?? horror and compassion?? unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.
When he falls ill on his way home from school?? fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna?? a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover?then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her?? he is a young law student?? and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her inn"Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.Amazon.com ReviewOprah Book Club?? Selection?? February 1999: 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 postwar 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? "elieve