The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink (HC)
From the bestselling author of The Reader, a striking exploration of the past, told through the story of a German bookseller’s attempt to connect with his radicalized granddaughter.
It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east.
His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, intent on reclaiming and settling ancestral lands to the East. Among them, Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit. Beside her is a red-haired, slouching, fifteen-year-old girl. His granddaughter? Their worlds could not be more different— an ideological gulf of mistrust yawns between them— but he is determined to accept her as his own.
More than twenty-five years after The Reader, Bernhard Schlink once again offers a masterfully gripping novel that powerfully probes the past’s role in contemporary life, transporting us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to modern day Australia, and asking what unites or separates us.
Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins
REVIEWS
“A brilliant dissection of a fragmented nation in which a glimmer of hope relieves a somber but wholly memorable tale.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[The Grandaughter] captures something important about contemporary Germany, lost amid countless news articles about the woes of a once mighty economy and the swift rise of the far-right party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), especially among the Ossis, as those from the East are called. The weight of the past hasn’t disappeared, it has shape-shifted. Perpetrators are dead, but the record of their evil deeds lives on. How best to cope? Schlink has his doppelgänger provide an answer.” — Washington Post
“Compelling…Schlink does a superb job of character development and sensitively charts the evolving relationship between Kaspar and Sigrun. . . . well plotted and unfailingly interesting, building suspense as readers wonder what will happen to Sigrun as she becomes a young woman.” — Booklist (starred review)
PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: HarperVia
ISBN: 978-0063295230
Pages: 336