Chapter 7 "I read it overnight"

—A tribute to Bernhard Schlink Christoph Schzanac The reviews of "Life and Death Reading" in Germany and around the world can be summed up in one sentence: this is the book we have been waiting for, without knowing it. In the four years since its first publication, the book has been spreading around the world week by week, day by day, hour by hour.It has become a unique bestseller, not with great fanfare, without fanfare, nor with advertising campaigns, not by media hype, but at a deep level, like the evolution of geological structures.In the twenty-five countries where the book is bestseller, it was moved not from table to shelf as a birthday present, never to be read (as is usually the fate of award-winning literary masterpieces), but from one hand Passed on to another person, who was not the same person after reading the book.Curious at first, they were overwhelmed a few hours later and put the slim novel down in shock, feeling first the floor shake under their feet, then disappearing.No matter who I ask anyone who has read "Readings of Life and Death"; he always says, "I read it overnight."

"Life and Death Readings" belongs to "Unbelievable Lifetime Confessions".Readers seem to be listening intently with bated breath, bewitched, as if they are on the scene. Kafka said: "The book must be the ax that cuts through the frozen ocean in our hearts." This book is just like that. The earliest readers were critics.They interpret the story of Michel and Hannah in such a way that the hopeless relationship between postwar Germans symbolizes the Nazi era that in fact continued to be hidden.A fifteen-year-old student falls in love with a streetcar conductor twenty years his senior who hides a double secret.The students symbolize the innocent new generation, who are emotionally inseparable from their parents. In Heine's words, there are too many stories about these parents. "People may know these stories, but they don't want to know them. Instead of recalling them Better forget about them."

After his lover disappeared mysteriously and he became an adult, the hero of the story became a rebellious college student, representing his generation to accuse the Nazi generation of crimes.But when he saw Hanna again in court, she became the defendant in the concentration camp trial, and the moral standards supported by Michelle's theory suddenly disappeared.He understands that the secret of his love story has the same cause as his lover's past guilt - Hannah's illiteracy, which she tries so hard to hide.Yet he remained silent in court, not telling the truth to set Hannah free.Schlink did not point out whether it is right or wrong for the hero to do so, nor did he point out whether admitting the big lie of life that cannot be corrected counts as respecting others' autonomy over fate.

"Life and Death Reading" is also an unheard monologue by the author on Germans' views on guilt and crime. Is "Life and Death Reading" just a very political book?Do love stories merely lure readers into thinking about moral fringes?The more I got into Hannah and Michelle's story, the more skeptical I became.The more you read, the more you'll hear voices you didn't hear in the thrill of solving Hannah's mystery. Schlink hints at people elsewhere.You can also read "Life and Death Reading" like this: a great love story that needs the most tender care.The author deliberately hides it in a historical allegory, the more half-hidden it is, the more glamorous it will be.Schlink often professed to love the German literature of the March Revolution.Like "Life and Death Reading," a story by Johann Peter Hel begins with a hug in the street and ends with a hug in a cemetery.Like "Readings of Life and Death", it tells the story of an old woman reuniting with her cold, dead groom who has not changed in decades.Compared with her "little lover", Hannah, who is too old, knows that she will lose her lover because she can't tell the secret. Isn't she like Andersen's daughter of the sea?The daughter of the sea is first ancient and immortal, and later becomes fragile and immortal because of her love for the prince.Wasn't she also a wordless enigma to the prince?Edward Merrick, admired by Schlink, tells in the Peregrina series that a theology college student has a love affair with a strange woman who mysteriously comes and disappears, and this woman has a huge impact on the college student's life.

The great love stories in the world's famous books are always inseparable from surprises.Fantasy, possession, infidelity, endless failure, irresistible longing for eternity.The novel begins when the fifteen-year-old protagonist touches his lover's body and ends decades later when the protagonist bids farewell to his lover who committed suicide.The novel also ends with death.The heroine does not want to return to the society, and only then does the hero, who has been absent for many years, realize that he has an inseparable connection with her. If I had a place on my shelf for "Life and Death Read," I'd put it with other books about mad love: Gottfried Keller's Romeo and Juliet in the Country, Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" and Nabokov's have similar heartbreaking parting scenes that become the secret center of the entire book.

This award brings to mind Willy Haas.He was the founder of Literary World in the twenties, spent several years in exile during the Nazi era, and made efforts to rebuild the spiritual life of Germany.He never saw literature as something abstract, something remote from life, something beyond or juxtaposed with life.For him literature is a living life.He didn't like to pay too much attention to form, or use literature as a tool only for political purposes.Haas never separates literature, author and reader.Haas's curiosity knew no bounds, so he was not interested in the distinction between serious and popular culture.He believes that entertainment and instruction are not mutually exclusive, but two sides of the same brand.He also believes that it is the most difficult and complex topics that require a lot of effort to make them understandable.I'm curious to see what he would say about Schlink's international success if he were alive today.For the first time in decades, a book from Germany has readers all over the world.I think Haas would be happy too.Because the human monologue about the fundamental things of life needs all voices that can say something essential.

The story of Hannah and Michel takes place in Germany, because the history of Germany in this century is full of unheard.Horribly instructive examples.A book about the inability of the letter of the law to answer the greatest moral catastrophe of our time. Schlink's art, or the abandonment of technique, endows the work with something more enduring than political education.Schlink describes a story of love and sex, followed by love's betrayal and love's death, and it's one of those stories that lasts forever.People will read it over and over to find out what they can do.