Fabula: Bernhard Schlink

At first glance, Olga is a classic, grand, historical novel but we soon find out that its tempo is dictated by a cunning author who is all the time one step ahead of his readers. Of course, the plot is historical but the narration is so full of suspense that we think the story is happening at the moment, in front of our eyes. In the late 19th century, Olga is striving for the right to self-fulfilment and love even though her era and circumstances are against it. Schlink tells Olga’s story from several perspectives and leaves the readers in uncertainty right until the end. This is a novel that one reads in a breath and it is a novel that sticks in one’s mind for a long time.

Bernhard Schlink (1944) is a 20th century literary classic and one of the most important German authors. His novel The Reader (original published in 1995) was marked as one of the biggest literary triumphs after Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum by Der Spiegel. The Reader is also the first German novel in history to have made it onto The New York Times’s ranking of best selling books. In 2008, David Hare transformed it into a film that was nominated for 5 Academy Awards and Kate Winslet received it for best actress.