'For any reader of The Reader, or indeed of Schlink's more light-hearted take on the same array of issues in his detective series about the ageing gumshoe Gerhard Self, Guilt about the Past will not so much answer the questions that his fiction poses but prompt sharper and deeper thoughts about them.' The Independent

The six essays that make up this compelling book view the long shadow of past guilt that is a German experience as well as a global one. 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 behaviour, how to reconcile a guilt-laden past, the role of law in this process and how the theme of guilt influences his own fiction. Based on the Weidenfeld lectures he delivered at Oxford University in 2008, 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 author
Bernhard Schlink was born in 1944 near Bielefeld, Germany. He studied law in Heidelberg and Berlin. He is a professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law and the Philosophy of Law at Berlin’s Humbolt University. Schlink has authored works in both fiction and non-fiction. Before publishing The Reader in 1995, he wrote several prize-winning mystery novels. Since its publication, The Reader has been translated into over twenty languages. His most recent literary novel was Homecoming

Details

• ISBN 9781905636778
• Published 11th February 2010
• Size: Paperback
• Pages: 192
• RRP: £8.99

Rights information

• UK only.