This novel held my attention from start to finish!
At its end, it left me with unanswered questions.
The year is 1958.
Michael Berg is the protagonist and early on he has an affair with Hannah Schmidt a ticket collector on a tram in a West German City. This is no 'ordinary' liaison as he is 15 and she is 38; their love making is preceded by bathing.
She often insists he read to her from the classics like The Odyssey and Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog at the start of each meeting.
Of course, Hannah is controlling of their relationship and is at times verbally and physically abusive.
Then one day she disappears. Michael is uncomprehending of her split and is hurt.
Seven years later, he catches a glimpse of Hannah during a war crimes trial he begins attending as part of his Law School coursework. She is a defendant along with a group of female SS guards who served at a satellite camp near Auschwitz. They are tried for allowing 300 Jewish women (they were escorting on a death march?) to perish in a fire while locked up in a church.
Michael is astonished when Hannah appears to take full responsibility for the deaths; she is also accused of writing the account of the fire. (She first denies the latter and quickly changes her plea when she realizes she will have to give a sample of her handwriting.)
It is then that Michael realizes Hannah's secret--she is illiterate. We also learn that Hannah sheltered the weak women at the camp and had them read to her before they are sent to the gas chambers.
At this point in the narrative, I invite my reader to grab the novel and discover yourself the surprise ending and the answer to some of the following questions.
1. Does Hannah get convicted and does she serve time?
2. If so, how does she spend her time in jail?
3. Does she show remorse for her complicity in crimes she may have committed? Is she granted some type of absolution?
4. Does Michael reconnect with Hannah during or after the trial?
5. How does Michael deal with the moral issues of having had a close/loving connection to someone who committed war crimes? (He confesses "the pain I went through because of my love for Hannah was, in a way, the fate of my generation, a German fate...")
6. How has Michael's relationship with his wife and children been affected by his love for Hannah?
6. How does the author deal with the collective guilt that Michael's generation has towards the complicity of his parents' generation in the holocaust?
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