Předčítač – Schlink Bernhard (2025)

At the very beginning of Schlink's novel stands an event that is purely personal, if not directly private: namely, the illness of hepatitis. However, during its course, there is a transcendence that directly touches the fate and conscience of one of Europe's greatest nations. When fifteen-year-old Michael Berg feels unwell on the street, a certain woman, Hanna Schmitz, helps him. The boy later seeks her out, and a love affair develops from their meeting – an unequal and simultaneously unique relationship, as there is more than twenty years between the two protagonists. Although Hanna works as a tram conductor and her education is obviously not great, she demands that her lover read books to her in his free time. Later, however, Hanna mysteriously disappears, and Michael encounters her again as a law student at the end of the sixties – during a trial against Nazi war criminals. The Reader received mixed reviews upon its release; from enthusiastic responses comparing it to Grass's The Tin Drum, to condemnations accusing the book of morally leveling the relationship between victims and murderers. Regardless of which side its readers lean towards, such a range of opinions is clear evidence that The Reader is still a living work that…