An Evening with Bernhard Schlink
In his only San Diego appearance, German author Bernhard Schlink will be sharing his new title, The Granddaughter. An "unflinching look at the neo-Nazi movement and the compromises people make out of love" according to Publishers Weekly, it's a fascinating new novel by the man who wrote The Reader.
This event is free and open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-served, subject to availability. Limited preferred seating is available with purchase of The Granddaughter through Adventures by the Book. Please visit https://adventuresbythebook.com/calendar-event/bernhard-schlink-4-22-25/ for more information.
About The 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
About Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Reader. He is a former judge and teaches public law and legal philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.