In ‘The Granddaughter,’ Germans reckon with the past

The new novel by “The Reader” author Bernhard Schlink follows a man trying to rescue a girl from the grip of neo-Nazis.

By Clare McHugh

When the Berlin Wall fell 35 years ago, Americans could watch live on television as grievous wrongs were righted. The tyrannical East German state collapsed, and freedom was restored in the heart of Europe. A miracle — all the sweeter for being so unexpected.

Needless to say, for Germans, it’s been a lot more complicated. Reunification tested the nation in myriad ways: politically, socially and fiscally. And fallout from the original trauma — the sealing behind concrete and barbed wire of more than 16 million fellow citizens for 28 years — endures. The border between East and West has vanished, but Germans still stare across it with mutual distrust and fear.

In his new novel, “The Granddaughter,” Bernhard Schlink sets out to explicate these lingering antagonisms. And who better? Schlink’s 1995 bestseller, “The Reader” — adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Kate Winslet — told a deceptively simple story of a young man’s affair with an older woman. But teenage Michael Berg stood in for a whole generation: the Germans who, coming of age after the war, were compelled to confront their elders’ aiding and abetting of the murderous Nazi regime. Read the full review at the Washington Post.