Book· 1995· Historical

Der Vorleser (The Reader)

by Bernhard Schlink

Der Vorleser (The Reader): 1 recorded work traces back to it, and it draws on 1 recorded source.

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The Reader

Film · 2008

AdaptationHIGH

Stephen Daldry's film adapts Bernhard Schlink's novel about a teenager's affair with an older woman in postwar Germany, whom he later sees on trial as a former concentration camp guard.

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Real-world influenceHIGH
  • The Holocaust

Bernhard Schlink's novel turns on a former guard at a concentration camp tried in postwar Germany, and on how the generation born after the war judged the one that came before.

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About the work

Der Vorleser (The Reader)

The story is a parable dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the Nachgeborenen. Like other novels in the genre of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, The Reader explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses died and living memory was fading.

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