Pre-reader

When Michael, a law student, finds himself on trial in the trial of female guards from a concentration camp near Krakow, he meets a woman with whom he had a passionate affair when he was fifteen. As a teenager, he has a relationship with Hanna, almost twenty years his senior, and he remembers everything they have been through together and tries to come to terms with the past she has hidden from him. Who was the woman who liked him to read to her in bed after their lovemaking? The novel, narrated by the protagonist in "ich" form and accompanied by his intimate philosophical reflections, deals with the question of German guilt for the crimes of the Second World War and the attitude of two generations towards it against the background of fateful love. The novel was made into a film in 2088 by director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Crown), starring Kate Winslet, David Cross and Ralph Fiennes.