As a child raised by his mother in post-war Germany, Peter Debauer becomes fascinated by a story he discovers in the proof pages of a novel edited by his grandparents. It is the tale of a German prisoner of war who escapes from a Russian camp and braves countless dangers to return home to a wife who believes him to be dead. But the novel is incomplete and Peter becomes obsessed by the question of what happened when the soldier and his wife met again. Years later, the adult Peter remembers the novel and embarks on a search for the missing pages that soon becomes a mysterious search for his own father, a German soldier whom he always believed was killed in the war.
Reviews
"Starred Review. Schlink's first novel, The Reader (1997), became a U.S. bestseller after it was an Oprah pick. That book, and his next, a short story collection, raised moral questions about Germany right after WWII; his latest, following two crime novels, takes up that line of inquiry and may be his most powerful and disquieting. The title refers to a pulp novel discovered in fragments by the narrator, Peter Debauer, and to Debauer's quest to find the book's pseudonymous author, who seems to have an uncanny knowledge of the conditions and landmarks of Debauer's own youth in postwar Germany. This mysterious work, with similarities to The Odyssey, offers tantalizing clues to a deeper mystery, that of the identity of Debauer's father, reported dead after the war. Debauer's youth, failed career and love life play out against authoritatively detailed scenes of Nazi degeneracy, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stark differences between East and West Germany. As in his previous works, Schlink's protagonist is a flawed character who elicits the reader's understanding but not affection—until the poignant denouement." Publishers Weekly
"Schlink's phenomenal The Readeris a hard act to follow, and while this new work doesn't quite measure up, it's still very, very good. Raised in post-World War II Germany by a tight-lipped single mother who consents to send him off to Switzerland each summer to visit his paternal grandparents, Peter Debauer jostles modestly through life. In childhood, he became fascinated with a set edited by his grandfather called Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and Entertainmentand particularly with the story of a returning soldier that has poignant personal echoes. Tracking down the apartment where he believes the story took places leads him not only to a complicated affair with a woman named Barbara but to questions about his father, presumably lost during the war. The truth turns out to be unsettlingly different, and Peter ends up in New York on a mission. Neatly tucked into the present, the slow unfolding of Peter's past is intriguing, and the novel climaxes with some frighteningly intense scenes. The one surprise is that the language can sometimes sound routine, even clichéd, which may be the translation. Nevertheless, this is definitely recommended for all libraries." Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Author Biography
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany in 1944. A professor of law at the University of Berlin and a practising judge, he is the author of the major international bestselling novel THE READER as well as several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.
