The Reader

1. The Reader Contexts

2. Relevant Contexts • Historical> Published in 1995, 50 years after the end of the Second World War • Context of publication > the end of the twentieth century when a number of countries including Germany were trying to find ways to come to terms with their pasts. These countries include Chile, South Africa, Rwanda • Context of reception > the novel was very popular in both Germany and the English speaking world

3. Continuation • "Sometimes 80% of German bestseller lists can be made up of foreign writers; people such as Isobel Allende or Nick Hornby German publishers have had great difficulty selling German writers to German audiences, so some have been looking for more accessible fiction, more Anglo-Saxon style German fiction, and Schlink fitted the bill. This has coincided with increased interest in the Holocaust sparked on one level by things like Schindler's List, but also by events in Rwanda and Bosnia which made many think again about why people, and not just Germans, do these things." Frank Finlay, Head of German at Leeds University

4. Continuation • Historical Setting> • A retrospective narrative in which the elderly narrator Michael takes us back to various stages in his life including when he was 15 and met Hanna (around 1956), the trial (around 1960), his early adulthood and marriage building up to Hanna’s impending release from prison after serving 18 years, and then to the present of the novel which is 10 years after the latter events

5. More negative repsonses… • the book has also been vehemently criticised, particularly for the idea that Hanna's illiteracy is somehow an excuse for her actions. The writer Frederick Raphael said, "no-one could recommend The Reader without having a tin ear for fiction and a blind eye for evil". • Writer and critic Cynthia Ozick claimed the novel "is the product, conscious or not, of a desire to divert [attention] from the culpability of a normally educated population in a nation famed for Kultur".