Dear colleagues,
please forgive me for publicising a new edition of Der Vorleser on the list.
Below is the blurb from the publishers (from whom you can get an inspection
copy).
With best wishes
Stuart Taberner
PRESS RELEASE
New from Bristol Classical Press German Texts
Schlink: Der Vorleser
Series Editor: Peter Hutchinson. Edited with Introduction, Notes and
Vocabulary by Stuart Taberner
Bernhard Schlink, university professor and constitutional court judge, was
born in 1944. His novel Der Vorleser has sold in excess of 500,000 copies in
Germany, 750,000 in America and 200,000 in Britain. It has been translated
into 25 languages, been 'book of the month' on the Oprah Winfrey show, and
turned into a feature film by Anthony Minghella (director of The English
Patient)
Der Vorleser, dealing with the legacy of a Nazi past, explores the themes
of the holocaust and questions of guilt, morality and personal
responsibility. It responds to our needs to understand the mechanisms of
ordinary people’s involvement in mass murder and the blurred distinctions
between victims and perpetrators. Its unusual perhaps even shocking
juxtapositioning of the taboo seduction of an adolescent boy by an older
women, with the revelation of her horrendous crimes as a Nazi concentration
camp guard appealed across national divide.
Its central character Michael Berg looks back from the early 1990s to
his adolescent love affair in the 1950s with the then 36-year-old Hanna
Schmitz. Later it turns out that she had been a guard in Auschwitz, perhaps
responsible for the death of a large number of women on a forced march. Yet
it may have been that she had become a guard only to conceal the fact of her
illiteracy. Does this lessen her guilt? Michael ponders this question
through the eighteen years of her imprisonment, during which he sends her
tape recordings of famous works of literature. On the morning of her release
she hangs herself. Having finally learned to read and write in prison, is
she now overwhelmed by guilt? Michael's answer to this, and to other
questions may leave something to be desired.
Schlink's novel is a major achievement both as a work of literature and
as a stimulus for discussion of the holocaust and contemporary genocidal
massacres. It explores morality, personal responsibility and the balance
between understanding and forgiveness.
This is the first edition for students of German of an important modern
novel. It is the first to carry a comprehensive critical introduction in
English. It also offers excellent questions for discussion on the text and a
vocabulary, making the German text accessible to students. It carries the
full German text, with a substantial Introduction, Commentary, Vocabulary
and Bibliography in English.
Stuart Taberner is Lecturer in German at the University of Leeds.
For further information or to request a review copy, please contact:
Suzannah Rich Publicity Manager [log in to unmask]
£9.99 paperback ISBN 1-85399-649-1
Publication: August 2002
Dr Stuart Taberner
Department of German
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
(0044) 0113 2333504
