Bernhard Schlink Books In Order

Gerhard Self Books In Publication Order

  1. Self’s Punishment (With: Walter Popp) (1987)
  2. Self’s Deception (1992)
  3. Self’s Murder (2001)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Flights of Love (2000)
  2. Summer Lies (2010)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Reader (1995)
  2. Homecoming (2006)
  3. Guilt About the Past (2007)
  4. The Gordian Knot (2009)
  5. The Weekend (2010)
  6. The Woman on the Stairs (2014)
  7. Olga (2020)

Gerhard Self Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Bernhard Schlink Books Overview

Self’s Punishment (With: Walter Popp)

As a young man, Gerhard Self served as a Na*zi prosecutor. After the war he was barred from the judicial system and so became a private investigator. He has never, however, forgotten his complicity in evil. Hired by a childhood friend, the aging Self searches for a prankish hacker who’s invaded the computer system of a Rhineland chemical plant. But his investigation leads to murder, and from there to the charnel house of Germany s past, where the secrets of powerful corporations lie among the bones of numberless dead. What ensues is a taut, psychologically complex, and densely atmospheric moral thriller featuring a shrewd, self mocking protagonist.

Self’s Deception

Gerhard Self, the dour private detective, returns in this riveting crime novel about terrorism, governmental cover up, and the treacherous waters where they mix. Leo Salger, the daughter of a powerful Bonn bureaucrat, is missing, and Self has been hired to find her. His investigation initially leads him to a psych ward at a local hospital, where he is made to believe that Leo fell from a window and died. Self soon discovers, however, that Leo is alive and well and that she was involved in a terrorist incident the government is feverishly trying to keep under wraps. The result is a wildly entertaining, superbly nuanced thriller that follows one detective’s desire to uncover the truth, wherever it may lead.

Self’s Murder

Gerhard Self, the seventy something, sambuca drinking, Sweet Afton smoking sleuth returns in a riveting new mystery about money laundering, murder, and mafiosi. Despite his failing health and his girlfriend’s pleading, Gerhard Self won’t stop doing what he does best investigating. And his most recent case is one of the most intriguing of his career. Herr Welker desperately wants to write a history of his bank, but to do so he needs Self to track down a mysterious silent partner. Self takes the job, but is soon accosted by a man who frantically hands him a suitcase full of cash and speeds off in a car, only to crash into a tree, dying instantly. Perplexed, and convinced there is more to the case than he is being told, Self follows the money. Soon he finds himself traveling to eastern Germany, where he encounters some of the most unsavory villains he has met yet.

Flights of Love

Bernhard Schlink brings to these seven superbly crafted stories the same sleek concision and moral acuity that made The Reader an international bestseller. His characters men with importunate appetites and unfortunate habits of deception are uneasily suspended between the desire for love and the impulse toward flight.A young boy’s fascination with an eerily erotic painting gradually leads him into the labyrinth of his family s secrets. The friendship between a West Berliner and an idealistic young couple from the East founders amid the prosperity and revelations that follow the collapse of communism. An acrobatic philanderer one wife and two mistresses, all apparently quite happy begins to crack under the weight of his abundance. By turns brooding and comic, and filled with the suspense that comes from the inexorable unfolding of character, Flights of Love is nothing less than masterful

The Reader

Already an acclaimed and best selling work of fiction in Europe currently being translated into fourteen different languages worldwide, The Reader is both a literary surprise and a moral challenge: a riveting, provocative, and deeply moving novel about a young boy’s erotic awakening in a passionate, clandestine love affair with an older woman, and what happens to them both when the secrets in her past are revealed. Fifteen year old Michael Berg becomes ill on the way home from school. A woman takes care of him. Later, the boy arrives at her home with a bunch of flowers to thank her. And then comes back again. Hanna is the first woman he has ever desired. But there is something slightly off key about her. His questions about her family and her life go unanswered. One day Hanna simply disappears. Michael’s life goes on, but he can’t forget her. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman he had loved so passionately is a criminal. Much about her behavior during the trial makes no sense. But then, suddenly and terribly, it does Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. As the past erupts into the present both Michael’s past with Hanna, and the past of Germany itself Michael must accept that he will never be free of either of them.

Homecoming

The first novel by Bernhard Schlink since his international best seller The Reader, Homecoming is the story of one man’s odyssey and another man’s pursuit.A child of World War II, Peter Debauer grew up with his mother and scant memories of his father, a victim of war. Now an adult, Peter embarks upon a search for the truth surrounding his mother’s unwavering but shaky history and the possibility of finding his missing father after all these years. The search takes him across Europe, to the United States, and back: finding witnesses, falling in and out of love, chasing fragments of a story and a person who may or may not exist. Within a maze of reinvented identities, Peter pieces together a portrait of a man who uses words as one might use a change of clothing, as he assumes a new guise in any given situation simply to stay alive. The chase leads Peter to New York City, where he hopes to find the real person behind the disguises. Operating under an assumed identity of his own, Peter unravels the secrets surrounding Columbia University’s celebrated political science professor and best selling author John de Baur, who is known for his incendiary philosophy and the charismatic rapport he has with his students. Terrifying mind games challenge Peter’s ability to bring to light the truth surrounding his family history while still holding on to the love of a woman who promises a new life, free of lies and deceit. Homecoming is a story of fathers and sons, men and women, war and peace. It reveals the humanity that survives the trauma of war and the ongoing possibility for redemption. From the Hardcover edition.

Guilt About the Past

The six essays that make up this compelling book view the long shadow of past guilt both as a uniquely German experience and as a global one. Bernhard Schlink explores the phenomenon of guilt and how it attaches to a whole society, not just to individual perpetrators. He considers how to use the lesson of history to motivate individual moral behavior, how to reconcile a guilt laden past, how the role of law functions in this process, and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. Based on the Weidenfeld Lectures he delivered at Oxford University, Guilt About the Past is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how events of the past can affect a nation’s future. Written in Bernhard Schlink’s eloquent but accessible style, it taps in to worldwide interest in the aftermath of war and how to forgive and reconcile the various legacies of the past.

The Gordian Knot

A classic noir thriller about love and deception from the bestselling author of The Reader. Georg Polger ekes out a lonely living as a freelance translator in the south of France, until he is approached by a certain Mr. Bulnakov, who has a intriguing proposition: Georg is to take over a local translation agency and finish a project left by the previous owner, who died in a mysterious accident. The money is right and then there is the matter of Bulnakov’s secretary, Francoise, with whom Georg has fallen hopelessly in love. Late one night, however, Georg discovers Francoise secretly photographing a sensitive military project. He is shocked and heartbroken. Then, her eventual disappearance leaves him not only bereft, but suspicious of the motivations behind Mr. Bulnakov s offer. To make matters worse, Georg s every move is being watched. Determined to find out who Francoise really is, and to foil who ever is tracking him, Georg sets out on an mission that will take him to New York City, where with each step he is dragged deeper and deeper into a deadly whirlpool in which friend and foe are indistinguishable.

The Weekend

A provocative, haunting novel from the acclaimed author of The Reader. Old friends and lovers reunite for a weekend in a secluded country home after spending decades apart. They excavate old memories and pass clandestine judgments on the wildly divergent paths they ve taken since their youth. But this isn t just any reunion, and their conversations about the old days aren t your typical reminiscences: After twenty four years, J rg, a convicted murderer and terrorist, has been released from prison. The announcement of his pardon sends shock waves throughout the country, but before the announcement, his friends some of whom were Baader Meinhof sympathizers or those who clung to them gather for his first weekend of freedom. They are invited by J rg’s devoted sister, Christiane, whose overwhelming concern for her brother s safety is matched only by the unrelenting pull of Marko, a unnervingly passionate young man intent on having J rg continue to fight for the cause. Bernhard Schlink is at his finest as The Weekend unfolds. Passions are pitted against pragmatism, ideas against actions, and hopes against heartbreaking realities.

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