The Reader

In postwar Germany, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg suddenly falls ill on the street while riding a tram. A thirty-six-year-old stranger, a ticket conductor named Hanna, cleans him up and takes him home. After recovering, Michael visits to thank her at his mother's instruction, and a secret love affair begins. Michael goes to Hanna's home every day and reads aloud to her from literary classics such as The Odyssey, War and Peace, and The Lady with the Dog; Hanna sometimes cries, sometimes laughs, like a child fed on stories. The forbidden relationship lasts a summer, and then Hanna suddenly disappears without a word. Eight years later, Michael is a law student. While observing a trial of Nazi concentration camp guards, he sees Hanna in the defendants' box. The other defendants shift blame onto her, and Hanna would rather admit to a report she did not write than submit a handwriting comparison. Michael then understands what Hanna has been trying to hide: she is illiterate, ashamed to admit it, and would rather face life imprisonment than surrender this secret. Many years later, Hanna, serving her sentence, receives reading-aloud tapes sent by Michael—the only communication still possible between them. This is a story intertwining love, shame, and collective guilt, concise yet heavy: how far will a person go to protect a secret?